


Polarized

by DevinTowerwood



Series: Life in Snippets [4]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Multi, Polyamory, Supernatural AU - Freeform, bigender!Chloe, trans!Victoria - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-04-23 06:51:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4867226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevinTowerwood/pseuds/DevinTowerwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Read the series before starting "Polarized" of Life in Snippets!</p><p>Things come to a close...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Review and a Preview

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Justice.

Everything was dark but warm. There was somebody talking in a soft voice, but she couldn’t see them.

\--

After Mr. Jefferson drugged her, Kate had returned to full consciousness in the trunk of his car. She had no idea how this could have happened, but she physically felt the drugs expire within minutes of having been dosed. Nevertheless, she stayed still inside, realizing that this did not ultimately alter the plan. She stayed still in his idle trunk, and made no sound when the car began to move. All the way out into the boondocks of Arcadia Bay, she was still, and when Mr. Jefferson opened up the trunk of his car, she made her body limp.  
Drying and dry blood stuck her hair to her scalp where her head had been bashed into her mirror.

This place was cold. She could hear what sounded like an air conditioner, and although the world outside was plenty cold enough, it kept running. She did not open her eyes to observe, but she could feel it when she was placed in a bright place in the room, and Mr. Jefferson began to position her, moving back and forth between her and a camera.

After several minutes, he seemed to grow annoyed at her closed eyes, and she heard his dress shoes approach her once again. He crouched down, and with his thumb pried open her eye lids.

“Katie, Katie . . . it looks like you have a tolerance. What a party animal you’ve been. Just like Rachel. But don’t worry, I won’t make any mistakes with you.”

He walked away, beyond the camera to which he usually paced, and Kate realized she was about to be dosed again. Nevertheless, this was part of the plan - she didn’t want him to hurt her anymore, it would all work out if she just stayed drugged. She might not even remember anything. It could be all right. Max and Victoria would save her. They would save her.

Then, Kate saw something new appear in the room, and it startled her out of her facade of helplessness.

Frank, face filled with frustration, appeared just behind the tripod on which Jefferson’s camera was mounted. His eyes locked onto Kate.   
“Shit! Again! I have to get you out of here!”  
He stepped forward, and Kate tried to form the right words to warn him. But it was much too late.

Frank collapsed on the floor as a spray of blood exited from his throat. Kate screamed as he fell, clutching for his own throat futilely. She jumped to her feet, and took the first step towards his bleeding body, as if she might be able to save him in his final seconds.

“What?” Jefferson stood by a tray that contained several vials and syringes. In his right hand he held a smooth, silvery gun.

They stared at each other for a moment, frozen. But, then, he held his gun aloft. “Sorry, Katie.” And he squeezed the trigger.

\--

Kate could not have imagined that the world she would awake to would be the worse than the moment that the bullet ripped through her brain. But she awoke to her face partially submerged in her own sticky blood, and as she raised her head, its black-red left her blind. She raised her free arm and wiped as much from her eyes as she could.  
And that’s when she saw her. Her eyes were blank and staring beneath her pale blonde hair. Her lips were perfect and red and trembling. Her stomach was soaked in blood, and though her hands were stained in her own fresh blood, they now lay limp off to her side.

“No,” Kate emitted, a staggered, shock-sob, so low she felt it more in her throat than she heard it. She extended her arm, now covered in her face-blood, and crawled towards Victoria.

The voice - Jefferson’s voice, was not from the room, that was the only reason it seemed soft. It sounded like it was coming from just outside the bunker. Kate could see little outside of the white rectangle, but it was too distant to be within the area provided.

“Victoria.” Kate’s hand fell onto the bullet wound in Victoria’s stomach as she pulled herself onto her knees. She clenched her fingers together, bunching them in Victoria’s shirt. She was not dead yet. Her lips still moved, just slightly, and as Kate’s fingers found her, her eyes seemed to achieve some level of focus, moving onto Kate.  
But, nevertheless, Kate was sobbing. Now she would watch Victoria die. She was supposed to die first. They were supposed to win, even if Kate had to die. That was all okay. If that’s what it took.

Victoria back spasmed, and then her limp arm shot up, and gripped Kate’s arm at the elbow, holding her against Victoria. “Victoria, Victoria . . . I won’t let you die. I love you. You won’t die. Just look at me. Victoria. Victoria.”  
As she said these words in grief, she somehow became conviction in them formed within her. Somehow, Victoria’s eyes did come to meet Kate’s, and Kate felt something more - pain, pain, terrible pain. But somewhere in that pain there was some sick relief. It manifested inside her strangely, but she knew exactly what the relief was: Kate is okay. Kate is okay. I’m so sorry.

These were Victoria’s feelings that she couldn’t make words. But Victoria must feel what Kate was feeling, too. Anguish and determination.   
Victoria spasmed again, and then she breathed, deeply, deeply. And Kate felt a tremendous force on her arm as Victoria sat up.

Kate gasped, and she felt something small, hard, and slick fall into the palm of her hand. Victoria’s breaths came hard and fast, and her eyes began to dart around wildly. “Max!” she said first, but volume was low. “He got her!”

Kate turned her body, and saw the grisly scene throughout the rest of the bunker. Resting next to the tripod, in the largest pool of blood, was Frank, blood not even trickling from his neck anymore. Beyond him, Max lay limp on the couch, reclined with her head too far back, but there was no blood from her. Compared to the blood-soaked state of the other three in the room, she looked perfectly fine.

Kate shook her head, “Max is okay,” she whispered, now aware that Jefferson was close enough to hear, and glad for the difficulty she had had speaking at first. Clarity was coming to her now.

Victoria was still breathing unsteadily. Kate looked down at her hand and found a blood-soaked bullet in her palm. Victoria’s hand moved to her stomach, and she found that there was no more bleeding, no more wound.

Somehow, she took Kate’s cue, whispering, “You saved me.”

Their eyes held contact, and Kate nodded. She knew. Somehow, somehow, she had just brought Victoria back from the edge of death. And she had been murdered . . . but she realized now that she was bleeding no more - no more head wound. Just the patches of blood that stained her face, just the weight of blood that stained her hair.

Kate’s head turned towards the sound of Mr. Jefferson. Then she whispered, “You stay here.”

Victoria had little else she was capable of, and when Kate broke contact with her, she just collapsed back to the floor, though she did not continue to bleed. She, instead, stared at the wealth of blood that outlined where Kate had been just a minute ago, and tried to follow Kate’s movements.

Kate crouched down in front of Frank, and placed her hand over his throat. She held the position for perhaps thirty seconds, but there was no change. He was dead, and she could not help him. Her hands were just soaked in more blood.

She stood, and as she moved over to Max’s body, she could hear Jefferson more clearly. He was at the top of the stairs, talking on his phone. He seemed . . . upset, and a little bit panicked, but he was trying to reassure someone.

Kate did not even need to check Max’s pulse. She was still breathing, albeit slowly, and as Kate approached her, she saw that her eyes moved - slowly, and not quite focusing on Kate - instead, they stared beyond her, at the white space of the studio. Her lips kept moving in a rhythmic motion, forming some silent word over and over again.

She was okay, for now at least.

Kate took a moment to think while Jefferson was still invested in his phone call. Her eyes fell to the syringes and bottles in the center of the room.

She stumbled over to them, and began to look them over. They were just like the ones he had dosed her with maybe an hour ago. She ran her fingers over them gently, then she lifted a syringe. How much had he dosed her with? From the tick markers, she might have guessed . . . 5mL? 4? She lifted a bottle, and inserted the needle, carefully withdrawing 10mL of the clear liquid inside.

She was barefoot, she noticed, and her quiet padding in her tights made very little sound. She held the syringe delicately, letting it hang down as she walked around the corner. She saw him, in his casual suit, shuffling back and forth while he talked to whomever was on the other side of the call.

“Right, I’ll do that.”

“You don’t have to worry.”

“Mmhmm, okay.”

“It’ll be done by morning.”

“I said don’t worry, I have plenty of ti-”

"Mister Jefferson.”  
The bearded photography teacher spun around, and looked down the poorly lit hallway. Standing at the base of the stairs, there he saw Kate, the syringe in her hand, face caked with blood, hands still slick from her attempts to save Victoria.  
“Oh my god, Kate?” He was quick to draw his gun, but his disbelief kept him from pulling the trigger as soon as he should. He lowered his phone from his ear.

“You killed them,” she uttered quietly, just standing at the base of the stairs. “You killed me. How could you do that?” She took her first step up the stairs.  
He leveled his gun.

Kate did not flinch.

**_Bang._ **

She held her fingers to the wound in her chest.

**_Bang!_ **

Blood dripped from the corners of her mouth as it flooded into her lungs.

Her words came choking out, “You’ve hurt me worse. You can’t make me see her dying again.”

He had to try. As he stumbled back from her, he fired another shot,  ** _bang!!_**  into her leg, his aim rapidly failing. It hurt immensely. She lunged forward at the end, like a sick replica of what he had done to her in her room. All his instincts told him to fight, that he could fight, and as she wrapped herself around him, he emptied every bullet he could into her gut. She could feel each one as it ripped through her, and yet the pain could not seem to send her into shock - she just felt it as she burrowed the needle in his neck, pushing so much force along with it it was amazing she did not break it in his skin.  
When his clip was empty, he was still strong enough to shove her away with his hands, and she fell to the ground, torso coated in blood and nearly incapacitated by the pain that was, it was so much worse than before. Dying had been so simple.  
He collapsed right next to her, as if a limb at a time gave out. He dropped the gun, then the phone as he tried to steady himself, but it was no use. Somebody was shouting on the other end of the phone.

As Jefferson finally fell to the ground, Kate felt her pain began to dissipate. It was incredible and alien, and if she had been able to truly think or feel in this moment, she would have been mortified by the Carrie-like scene of herself.

The screaming continued, and eventually, Kate was forced to address it. She rolled over, the straw of the barn sticking in her blood and turning her into a strange scarecrow. Then, she pushed herself up, and reached out for the phone.

She picked it up and held it to her ear - not that she could hear well after the gun fire and the blood. She swallowed, her blood moving from her trachea to her esophagus. Then, she spat onto the ground, not even having the spite to spit on Mr. Jefferson.  
“Who is this?” she asked, voice as low and distorted as she had ever heard from herself.

The person on the other side of the phone seemed to calm down immediately, or at least grow quiet. The voice on the other end was rough and masculine. “Where is Mark?” he asked.

Kate looked down at the pathetic, bearded photography teacher. “He killed me. He killed my friends. So he’s gone.”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end, followed by a moment of silence. Then, “There’s nothing you can do. The storm is coming.”

Kate nodded to herself. “I guess it is. Max was right. But you are wrong - I can do something. I can keep my friends safe, just like they kept me safe. I can make you pay for what you’ve done.”

The voice on the other end sighed, a deep, long sigh. “The price . . . is already paid. You should have stayed dead, Kate Marsh.”

The line went dead.


	2. Conference Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After having been drugged by Jefferson in his bunker, Max wakes up in a foreign world. She begins to uncover the secrets of her reality and her powers, but not everything is as it seems.

Still as Max Caulfield lay, the world inside her mind was not silent. She sat, rather limp, draped over the couch of the dark room some feet from the corpse of Frank Bowers while the scene between Victoria and Kate dragged along, but inside, things took on a much homier appearance.

As she opened up the door of the Two Whales, Max was a little shocked to find its occupants rather different than usual. Virtually every seat inside the diner was filled, with customers hunched over the bar, a line waiting for the bathroom, and multiple waiters making their rounds to serve everyone. The strangest thing about all of  this, however, was that each and every one of the occupants, as well as the staff, were Maxine Caulfield. Dressed in everything from her closet, everything from Victoria's closet, and a great variety beyond either of their closets, each of these Maxes chatted with one another, stirred their milk shakes, sipped their black coffee, split wedges of Belgium waffles with the edge of a long fork. Only one of the Maxes, standing near the entrance of the diner, even seemed to take notice to Max's entrance - this one was dressed in a black winter coat with a tall collar that was entirely unfamiliar to her.  
That one spoke up, "Oh, hey, cool, you're here. I think we've still got a few minutes until she shows up, so just find a seat."

Max, reasonably stunned, just nodded, and took a left, settling down in the same booth that she had sat in with Nathan. She just wrapped her fingers on the table, too nervous that she was actually familiar with the hoodie the Max across from her wore - a gray one with several colorful bars. Brooke's hoodie. She didn't even notice, and she would have been amazed if she paid more attention.  
As a Max dressed with one of the waitressing aprons of the Two Whales passed by, Max leaned out a little to grab her attention. The waitress!Max, with a nametag that read "Maxine she/they" paused, and held up her notepad to take her order. Max shook her head. "Hey there, um, Maxine. Who exactly are we waiting for?"

The waitress seemed terribly surprised, and took a moment to respond. "Well, our mother and father, you might say. Or . . . oh, you'll see when they're here. Can I get you anything to eat, hun?"  
"Oh, um," Max lifted up a menu, and opened it up, but found only two blank pieces of paper inside the sleeves of it. "Er," she said, and closed it back, then looked back to the waitress. "I'm good, thanks, I'll just wait for now, I guess."

The waitress nodded and then continued on, while Max continued to tap restlessly on the table. She began to look around for the Max in the red and black plaid she had met in the mirror, bust she did not see her anywhere - at least, she didn't see those clothes anywhere, and none of the Maxes had really made an effort to come and locate her. Not that they'd really know what to look for, anyway.

She only had to wait for so long. A moment later, she heard a flush from inside the bathroom, and maybe thirty seconds later another Max emerged from the bathroom, this one wearing a brown and white shirt with the insignia of . . . a butterfly?, with her gray hoodie over it. She wore the same hairbands that Max had used to wear on her arms before Victoria had insisted on trading them out for something more stylish. But, unlike when Max walked in, every Max in the diner turned to stare at this one as she exited the bathroom.  
The line, instead of letting the next person in, backed up against the wall opposite of the bathroom, which seemed to take the brown Max a bit aback. She seemed just as disturbed by the presence of so many Maxes as Max did, but she warily began to step into the diner, allowing, one by one, all of the other Maxes to catch a look of her, stop what they were doing, and turn to look straight at her.

Everything was dead quiet.  
"Are you . . . the Max from the other side of the mirror?" Max was the first to speak up, and a few of the others glanced over at her as she did, but most kept their attention rapt on the Max who emerged from the bathroom.  
The new Max's eyes locked onto Max, and she blinked for a moment. "What are you talking about?" she asked.  
Max just shook her head, clearly mistaken.

Near the corner of the bar, brown Max stopped to look at all of the others, not sure where to progress from here. "Who are you?" she asked the vast audience.  
The congregation was quiet for a moment, but then there was a Max, dressed in a pink tank top and the same gray hoodie as the brown Max, who called across the diner, "We're you, dumbass. We're the Maxes you've left behind."  
The brown Max seemed stunned, but when she could continue, she walked past Max over to the rude Max on the other side of the diner, standing near the edge of the table where that Max sat. "What do you mean?" she asked.

The pink-shirt Max scoffed. "You. You thought you could get away abusing us, wrapping time around your little finger. But you were wrong. The storm is coming, and it's going to kill everyone.  
Brown Max seemed terribly taken aback, and she wasn't the only one. Max herself was terribly confused at this accusation, but for now she just leaned out of her seat to watch a bit longer, to understand what was going on.  
"I . . . I what? I can stop the storm - I'm sure of it. Rachel just wants vengeance . . . and as soon as I wake up, I'll give it to her. I promise."

One of the Maxes sitting at the bar let out a laugh. She looked considerably worse than many of the others, with sunken eyes and sallow skin. "Vengeance? Rachel just didn't want to die. And it's not like you even tried to stop that from happening. You were willing to make a whole reality where I loved her just so I could experience the months without her, so I could find her body."  
The pink Max rounded on Brown Max again, "And why did you do it, huh Max? Was all of this to save your precious Chloe, like you keep telling yourself? Or could you just not wait to see how cool things could be as god?"

 _What? When . . . how did I fall in love with Rachel Amber? I've never even met her._  
Brown Max came back with to defend herself, "What? No! I've just been trying to put things right. I'll find the way to stop this all from happening - the storm, Jefferson, all of it. I'll find a way."  
Pink Max just shook her head. "You just don't get it, do you? Every time you try to 'find a way', you're abandoning us. You're forcing us to live out what you couldn't handle. Do you know what you made me, do, Max? Huh? Do you know who I am?"  
"No, I, I don't k-"  
"You fucking killed me, Max. Right here-" Max could see that pink Max lifted up her shirt, but could not see what Brown Max could from that point. Still, it was enough to shock her, because she covered her mouth with horror. "-I took a bullet for Chloe Price. And I bled out in the floor of some shitty bathroom for some good-for-nothing girl like Chloe Price, because you couldn't take that bullet yourself."

Max slid out of her seat, and walked over to this confrontation, standing close to the Max in the black jacket near the front doors. That's when a Max in an orange prison uniform pushed off the wall near the juke box, drawing attention to herself. "And me. You made me kill her. I didn't even want to go near her, but you made me kill Chloe, and now I'm going to spend the first fifteen years of my adult life in a federal prison because you couldn't handle the fact that _you killed her_. What gives you the right?"  
Brown Max looked around at all of these hostile Maxes, and took a step back towards the door. "I don't understand. I don't understand! None of this happened! I stopped it all."  
Pink Max let out a sound of disgust. "No, Max. You turned back time. You created a new reality, and left us behind."

The brown Max stood there silently for a moment, but now Max was confused, and wanted answers. She stepped forward, effectively boxing the brown Max in. "I don't understand either. How is this Max different from the rest of us? How is she responsible for everything that's happened to us, in all of these realities? And how are we all meeting right now?"  
The Max in pink peeked beyond the red one to look straight at Max, who swallowed a little, nervous. "I guess you could call this a conference call. But this Max here. She's the original. She's the real deal. She's the time traveler. We're just the skins she's shed along the way. And, one way or another, she's managed to find a way to fuck our lives over before she leaves us. Like, I bet some fucked up shit happened to you before you got here - what did she leave you with?"

Max reached up, and swiped some hair away from her face. And then, she remembered it. Not that she had forgotten it, but she was reminded at how real it was. "I . . . Jefferson killed them. He killed Kate. He killed Victoria. He killed Frank, too. And he drugged me - I'm probably in his dark room right now, waiting to become just another victim. And then he'll kill me, too."

The pink Max tossed her arms up, then indicated straight at Max with an open hand. "There! You see! You see what you leave us with? All you had to do was let one girl die, and none of this would have had to have happened."  
Brown Max began to cry, trying to choke out a response, but found that rather difficult. Max reached out, and laid a hand on her shoulder, though it was light. She was still trying to collect her thoughts. She looked over to the Max in pink, still sitting down. "And you. Why do you know so much?"

The pink Max's face contorted into an unusual smirk. "I was the first, you see? The first to die, at least. I don't see the actual first one around her. She's just given up by this point, I think. But me? I couldn't let this bitch get away with it all. Did you know that she was going to make another reality right when Kate Marsh was about to jump from the roof of the girls dorm? The nerve. But, don't you worry - I made her live through that one. She wasn't going to put us through some fresh hell because she couldn't handle another girl dying."  
The crying Max finally managed to sputter out something: "That was you? I couldn't her save because of _you_? I was so close."

Finally, the pink Max stood up from her seat at the booth, and she practically lunged forward, stopping maybe a foot from the crying Max. "No! You couldn't save her because you showed you didn't give a shit about her. I didn't make you ignore her calls. I didn't make you say all the wrong things to her. That's on you. But who knows how many more Maxes would be in here with broken Kates thirty feet below them if I hadn't stopped you? How many times would Kate have to die so you didn't have to live with that?"

The Max in brown finally began to break down entirely, but as she did, Max pulled her close against her body, and she began to sob into Max's shoulder. Max just tried to make sense of it all, and was struggling to that end. "If . . . if she was never supposed to gain those powers, why did she? Why did Victoria gain her powers? Why did I gain mine? What is the point of it all if we were never supposed to use them at all?"  
Pink Max shook her head, as if ashamed of Max. "It's a test of hubris, like all stories are. She failed. And we have to make sure she doesn't cause any more misery."

That was when the Max in the pink tank reached into her back pocket, and procured a sleek, silvery pistol, that she promptly leveled at the back of the sobbing Max's head. Max flinched back, nearly dragging the Max in brown along with her.  
"Oh my lord! Max, what are you doing?" Max turned to try and protect Max's head with her shoulder.  
"I'm putting an end to this," she growled, grabbing Max by the shoulder in an effort to rip her away from the Max she intended to shoot. All of the other Maxes backed up, or simply stood in shocked silence - clearly, they hadn't expected this on the agenda, either.

"You can't just kill her like that," Max spat, refusing to release her grip on the Max who was only breaking down into a state of near hysteria at this point, sobs somewhere approaching screams. "She's us! She's me! She can just stop using her power - or maybe, maybe she really can fix this. Maybe she can stop the storm!"

At this time, Max was too busy to realize that the front door of the diner opened up again, barely processing the sound.  
That was, until pink Max's gun snapped away from Max and the girl she was cradling towards whomever entered, and Max turned to look.

She did not recognize the girl who entered at all. She was tiny - just about Max's height but easily twenty pounds lighter, wearing a black tank top with a red-blue plaid hoodie, somehow coupled with short shorts. Just to top it off, she had asymmetrical piercings - double studs on one side, and a single ring from which a hung a bluejay feather on the other. She had long blonde hair and golden skin, and Max quickly recognized that, while not quite her type, she was extremely beautiful.  
The sickly-looking Max who sat at the bar sputtered out a single word: "Rachel?"

The Max in pink shoved the two Maxes holding each other out of the way, and they fell against the bar. As they fell, she paced beyond them, rapidly approaching Rachel with the gun held aloft straight at Rachel's head, but Rachel only crossed her arms at her approach.  
As the pink Max's reflection moved from window to window, though, Max realized that there was something very, very off about it. She looked too tall, and her clothes were all wrong . . . she didn't look like Max at all.  
But it was just a flash, and she could not tell who it looked like.

"What THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE? HOW DID YOU GET HERE?"  
Rachel smirked, even when the barrel of the gun was leveled at her head. "Boy's off the leash, and it looks like he didn't like seeing me in there anymore. You know, I heard he's actually feeling a lot better this evening - he could be home any minute now."  
The Max in pink wouldn't stop screaming, "YOU STUPID FUCKING _CUNT_ , WHAT DID YOU DO?"

Max finally turned around well enough, and inched around a little so she cold focus the reflection. And what she saw in the window made no sense to her. Not at first, because it was not Max in pink and a hoodie that she saw reflected back to her. No, she saw a tall man, perhaps 5'11", with a receding, salt'n'pepper hairline. He wore a white button-up shirt and slacks, similar to how Jefferson dressed, but she could see that one of his sleeves was rolled up beyond the crook of his arm.  
He cocked his gun in unison with the Max in pink right in front of Rachel.  
"Rachel!" Max yelled, ditching the Max in brown where she lay, and lunging for the phantasmagorical Max, who swung around at Max as she did so, but they were a lot less accurate as they did so, and as she fell on top of them, she didn't even recognize the sensation that punched through her stomach.

When she fell on the ground, there was no one below her. The Max in pink had simply disappeared, and Max brought a hand up to her stomach as she held herself up off the ground. She could feel a hot, sticky liquid coating her hand, and soon her strength gave out, just like when she had been tranquilized. When she rolled around, although it was out of focus, she could see that almost the entire diner was empty. There was her, Max, on the ground, bleeding out from a stomach wound. There was Rachel Amber, crouched above her, placing her palms over the wound and yelling. There was the Max in brown, her face covered with her hands while tears streamed down her face.  
"I don't know what's going on, I don't know what's going on, what is going on!" the Max in brown kept saying, as if she were begging.

"Hang in there, Max," Rachel said, much more steadily, "I'm not going to let you die. You hear me? Kate and Victoria - they're waiting for you, you hear? And Chloe is waiting too. You can still stop the storm," Rachel kept saying more and more, but everything she was saying was becoming duller and duller, as if further and further away. Max's vision was rapidly fading, dimming and going out of focus, "Come on, Max, you've got to save them. They still need you, Max, come on . . ."

And everything finally faded to black.


	3. Basic Yin and Yang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max, Kate, and Victoria start to piece together the last pieces of their mission. However, Max's behavior is beginning to diverge into the erratic.

Victoria had half crawled, half stumbled her way over to the couch to collapse on it next to Max after she heard all of the bullet fire from up stairs, but after having seen Kate stand back up from a bullet through the skull, she was much less concerned, especially when she continued to hear the murmurs of her voice when the bullets ceased. Despite the fact that the bullet was gone and the wound somehow sealed beneath a coat of slick blood, Victoria could not feel her extremities, and it did not help that she was coming down from a dose of E at the same time. To be perfectly honest, she was having a rather horrible time, so all she could do was grab Max's limp hand and lean on her to confirm the fact that they were still alive, likely staining her girlfriend's clothes and hands in blood at the same time.

Everything was cold and distant, but Victoria just began to talk to try and settle herself. Kate's murmuring had ended, and steps were now coming down the stairs. Either they were both fucked, like completely 100% dead, or Kate had somehow subdued Jefferson and he would be a threat no longer. There was nothing left that Victoria could do. She just watched the pool of blood that Frank still lay in and tried not to think about the pools that she and Kate had created in the area meant for photography. "I'm so sorry, babe. I knew you were right. I knew we should have gone to the police. I only got more people killed - and not just the ones who deserved it. If it weren't for Kate . . . we'd all be dead. I'm sure you'll have a 'told you so' for me tomorrow. That's fair. But. Uh. The art in here is something else, right? Heh ... ugh, no laughing Tori, you just had a hole through your diaphragm."

Victoria managed enough to at least turn to see who rounded the corner of the bunker, and would have been pleased to find Kate standing there if she hadn't been drenched in blood like a poster for Carrie. Previously, only her face had been drenched in blood, then her hands from trying to save Victoria . . . and now, her entire torso and her legs looked saturated in the stuff. And yet, unlike Victoria, she didn't seem to be struggling at all to walk around - she simply stopped to blink as she saw the room from this angle for the first time.  
Kate could clearly see where she had collapsed, for a pool of blood with a strange, curving patch of emptiness made up what had not clung to her body, while tiny particles of blood and brain matter fanned out across the white area. The pool that Victoria had generated was much more sparse, but it all pooled in one area. Neither of those frightened her terribly, but it was the sight of Frank's corpse that unsettled her.

"You . . . got him?" Victoria asked, as if she were unsure Kate were even standing there, voice weak and flat.  
Kate nodded, and approached the couch, careful not to touch anything with her hands, though there was still fresh blood dripping from her shirt and skirt. "Dosed him. I don't know how long that stuff'll last but, for now, we're safe."

Victoria raised an eyebrow with some effort. "For now? What's next?"

Kate opened her mouth to reply, but suddenly Victoria's eyes snapped away from her towards Max. Kate realized from her back view that Max was convulsing, and Victoria's hands quickly shot to Max's stomach. "No, no, no! What the fuck, no! She's bleeding: fuck, Kate, she's bleeding!"

Kate rushed around the couch to see what was happening, and indeed find fresh blood leaking between Victoria's fingers, similar to, but even worse than the bullet wound that Victoria had received several moments ago. Kate fell to her knees and placed her hands over Victoria's, adding to the pressure over Max's wound. They didn't even notice that the bleeding had stopped, but perhaps thirty seconds later, Max's eyes suddenly shot open, and she sat immediately upright in her seat.

"No!" she yelled, almost lurching forward out of her seat, but Kate and Victoria's hands held her back. A few seconds later, she seemed to process that they were there. "Victoria?" she asked, panting heavily, as if her shout had exhausted her. "And . . . Kate. How - what? You were both dead. I saw you die. Jefferson-"  
Kate shook her head, but didn't release her hands from Max's gut. "No, no, Jefferson couldn't kill us. I stopped him. You're safe, Max. He can't hurt us anymore."

Max did not seem any further from panic. "But . . . where is she? The other me? He almost got her. He almost got- RRGGHA" Max suddenly screamed as her hands lifted to her skull, and she clutched her temple for a moment. Kate and Victoria finally released their stance, with Kate dropping her hands to Max's knees and Victoria wrapping her arms around Max's shoulders.  
After a second, the sudden seizing ended, and Max was left still breathing heavily, but a bit more slowly. "I - we're not safe here. The storm is coming. We've got to stop him."  
Kate's face was contorted in confusion, and tried to explain, "No, Max, I got Jefferson. We can call the police about what we found, and they'll find evidence here for Nathan, and maybe his dad too. We're okay."

Max sat forward in her seat, clutching her stomach as if she were still holding her guts inside - though the wound was gone, and there was no hole in her clothing to indicate where it had even been. "You don't understand,  _sweetie_ -" the tone of this word struck both Kate and Victoria as very off: Kate because Max didn't use pet names like that, and Victoria because it sounded sarcastic, and Max was never sarcastic with pet names "- we've got hours, at best. Now that Sean knows Nathan let me out, he's not going to be gentle. Whoever gets out of town will get out - there will be no organized evacuation. He'll wipe us all out."  
Victoria rocked Max's shoulders a little, trying to get her to make sense. "Nathan let you out? What are you talking about? And what evacuation?"

Max began to stand, using Victoria to help gain her balance, and began to explain, "The evacuation into Pan Estates, it should have been happening any d-"  
Max cut to complete silence, and her eyes locked onto Frank. Then, she broke from the other two completely, and threw herself down on the ground next to him. "BABY?! Frank, NO! No no no no no no, NO! Baby, no, you can't be," she started to shake Frank in a futile effort to wake him, but he was dead long before Kate recovered from her shot in the head. He had been the first to die, and the last one for Kate to reach.

Max's eyes shot up to Kate and Victoria while her hands were wrapped up in Frank's clothing. "How did this happen? What is he doing here? He's not supposed to be anywhere near here right now! What happened?"  
Kate just stood, with no clue of what was going on, while Victoria managed to drag herself from the crouch and fall on her knees next to Max. "Max. Maxine. Maxine, he was dead when we got here. Jefferson shot him after he teleported on ahead. But Kate - she, she . . . she's alive. And she saved me. She saved you, Max. We're going to get through this."  
Max took several unsteady, rapid, but surprisingly deep breaths, like she were preparing to breathe fire. "Jefferson? Mark? He did this? He killed Frank? I'll kill him. I'll tear him ap . . . AAAAGH!" Max reached her hands back up to her skull as she screamed, and again Kate fell down beside her, placing her hands on her shoulders in an attempt to heal whatever the problem was. Victoria cradled her head as well against her shoulder, but when the screaming ended, Max was just crying.

"Tori? Tori, I don't know what's going on. What's happening? I . . ." she paused for a moment, but then pushed away from the other two, crawling over towards the edge of the room, next to the tray of vials and syringes, and vomited against the wheels.  
"Max? I don't know what's happening. But I know we're okay. We just need to get out of this room, and we need to call the police."

When Max could finally sit back up onto her knees without the immediate need to retch, she wiped her mouth and agreed, and Victoria helped lift her up. The two, weak as they were, began to stumble towards the stairs, but Kate went ahead and reached the sink, turning it on and coating her hands in soap, hoping to free at least this surface, and maybe her face, from the smeared coat of blood all over her. When the other two had nearly reached the stairs, though, they saw the trail of Kate's blood leading to the stop, and they paused. Kate turned her head towards them. "Jefferson . . . he has a partner. They were on the phone, working on cleaning us up. Try not to touch his gun . . . everything is going to be so complicated when the police arrive."  
  
Still, the two hesitated at the base of the stairs. "His partner?" Victoria asked aloud, "Sean, then? Sean Prescott? He really is in charge of this." The two started to make their way up the stairs, though they became single file, barely connected by their fingers as they attempted to avoid Kate’s blood, which created a horrific scene in the hallway, as if someone had been eviscerated and dragged away.  
On the stairs, Max asked tentatively, “Hey, Vic . . . what does. What does Sean Prescott look like?”

Victoria’s breath shot into her suddenly as she reached the landing, and saw Mark Jefferson, his shirt covered in patches of Kate’s blood, lying there in the hay. His gun remained close to where he collapsed, but Victoria tried to keep the same restraint and level-headedness Kate had shown this whole time, and left it lying there.  
She exhaled, trying to recall Sean’s face. “He . . . I guess he’s pretty plain. He’s tall, a little taller than me, maybe, and looks old for his age. He can’t be older than his mid forties but he looks like he’s approaching his sixties. Short hair. Looks nothing like Nate - he looks like his mom.”

Max nodded, a little too numb to try and confront exactly what that meant. “I think I saw him. In my dream, after Jefferson drugged me. I saw myself, but I was him. Am I - making any sense?”  
Victoria just led Max around Jefferson’s body, and looked in Jefferson’s car for the key for the barn door. It didn’t exactly take long to locate, as it just sat on his dash, and his car was unlocked, so within a moment they had doors open and managed to stumble out towards their car.  
“I don’t understand what you mean. You had a dream with Nathan’s dad? I mean, maybe, I don’t exactly have a photo, so maybe not. Let me find a picture,” she said, withdrawing her phone during this process, and both glad and surprised to find that she had an internet connection.

The night was cold but it was still clear. There was no longer any sign of two moons overhead, leaving Max to believe that this perception had been some illusion. Furthermore, she saw no indication that the storm was near, which helped settle her nerves a little.  
“I had a dream where I met me. A lot of mes, actually. And this isn’t the first time I’ve met another me, either - my vision about the storm [Wednesday night](http://meditatemoremedicateless.tumblr.com/post/128152974994/life-in-snippets-girls-night-gif-by-indyfalcon) wasn’t a vision at all. In Chloe’s bathroom, I met a me from another reality who warned me that the storm was coming, that the Prescotts were involved, and that I could find Rachel in the dark room. Oh! And Rachel, Rachel Amber was in my dream too and-”

“Hold up, sweetie, wait. So you, another you, told you that Nathan was responsible for taking Rachel, and that we’d find her here? And you met her in Chloe’s bathroom?” Victoria’s phone had loaded a local news article, but she simply held her phone in her hands while looking at Max.  
Max, however, looked down at the phone, and reached forward to take it from her hands. Victoria was used enough to this sort of invasion that she offered no resistance, and soon Max had the phone flipped around to look at the photograph. She blew it up with a quick touch, then placed a finger underneath Sean Prescott’s head.

The man whose reflection she had seen in the mirror. That was him. The one who had shot her.  
A splitting pain spread through Max’s skull, like she were being split right down the middle of her brain, but this time she managed to grit her teeth and grunt through the pain while it lasted - for maybe ten seconds. Victoria had simply laid a hand on her shoulder to support her through it, but she simply panted, as if she didn’t even notice it was there, looking forward as the pain subsided.

“Where is Frank?” she asked, almost meekly, looking up at Victoria’s eyes as she emerged from the little episode.  
Victoria felt a strange mixture of emotion from Max. Determination. Grief. Anger. Fear. They all made sense, but they seemed distant from the confusion she’d felt from her in these past days.  
“He’s dead, Max. He’s down in that ‘dark room’. There’s nothing we can do for him.” Victoria’s brow pinched together in concern.

“I need to make a phone call,” Max said suddenly, and closed out of the search browser on Victoria’s phone before turning away from her, beginning to pace back and forth between their car and the junk car outside of the barn.  
“Uh,” was all Victoria offered in response, not sure how to respond to Max’s erratic behavior and lack of acknowledgement of the conversation they’d just been having.

Kate finally emerged from the barn, with her arms and face relatively clean while her clothes were still soaked with blood, like she’d just added it as part of a costume. She approached Victoria, though slowed when she saw Max, not getting into the car yet despite the cold. Instead, the two listened to Max as she paced.

 _Max:_  “. . . Just call me back as soon as you can. This number or, uh, Max’s I guess. If I don’t know where you are I can’t protect you. And we can’t do it alone. Just get back to me. We don’t have long.”

She hung up a moment later, then returned to Victoria to hand her back her phone. “Thanks, Chase.” Then she slid her hands into her pockets and bit her lower lip in thought, rather uncharacteristically.  
Victoria blinked at being called ‘Chase’. No one called her that - especially not Max.  
Then Max finally seemed to gain control of her thoughts, “Where would Nathan go if he didn’t want to be found? Where would he hide out?”

Now it was Kate’s turn to look concerned. “Max . . . Nathan is in the hospital. We saw him a few hours ago - and he wasn’t going anywhere.”  
Max shook her head, “No, he’s not. He returned to Blackwell recently, so he must be close. Where does he go when he wants to get away from his dad?”

Victoria shrugged, jutting her head out a little in confusion - Max wasn’t making any sense. How could Nathan have gotten out of the hospital? Kate and Max had come back from there at like, 5:30pm. “My room, I guess? We drive to Two Whales or the beach or something so he can cool off for a little bit - he likes to go do graffiti. But there’s no way that he could be-”

Max suddenly raised a finger to interrupt, then reached into her pocket to retrieve her vibrating phone. Her eyes darted from it up to Kate, and said, “It’s from . . . Kate Marsh.” She swallowed, then swiped right.

 _Max:_  “Yeah, she’s with me. She’s safe.”  
 _Max:_  “Oh, no, yeah, he got her. Me, too. And he killed . . . he killed Frank.”  
 _Max:_  “Yeah.”  
 _Max:_  “No, stay where you are. We have got to end this tonight.”  
 _Max:_  “I know, Nate, I know. But I’ll . . . first thing’s first, okay?”  
 _Max: “_ We’ll be right there. Oh, and Nathan, bring a change of clothes for Kate.”

She hung up, and slipped the phone back into her jeans.  
“We have to get back to the beach as soon as possible. We’re meeting up with Nathan at . . . Frank’s RV. Come on - wait, do we have any weapons?” She had begun to walk towards the Prius’s driver’s seat, but paused to turn towards the others and ask this question.

Kate assessed this quickly, used to Max’s strange behavior much more readily than Victoria was, “Just Frank’s. I . . . I think Jefferson used up all of his shots on me. But Frank’s should still be loaded. I think Jefferson has it.”

Max nodded, leaning a little against the Prius. “Could you . . . go get that for me, Kate?”  
Kate’s eyes sat steadily on Max for a moment, then, “Yeah, sure.” She returned to the interior of the barn.

Victoria took a step back towards Max, confused and strangely sort of pissed with Max’s new behavior. “Max, babe, we have got to call the police. They can arrest Sean Prescott and Jefferson. And if the storm’s coming, law enforcement seems like the sort of people we should contact - we can’t exactly call a meteorologist at this hour. We don’t want Kate’s prints on anything more, and we definitely don’t want to be in more contact with Nathan right now; I don’t even know how you could have known he was out of the hospital, but he did this, you understand? He worked with Jefferson and his dad on all of this. He’s going to go to prison with the rest of them. . . what is  _up_  with you?”

A slow smile had been creeping up Max’s face while Victoria spoke, finally breaking into full-on laughter as Victoria said that they’d be going to prison, and it distinctly unnerved her. But Max finally clarified: “The police can’t handle Sean Prescott, Victoria. Even if they were willing, they can’t do shit. They’d only get in my way, and then the storm would kill us all. And the only way we can do this is with Nathan - who, for your information, wasn’t willing to hurt me. Or you, for that matter - I mean, he let me out for you, so that’s . . .”  
Max quieted as Victoria took another step towards her, reaching out and grasping her hand with her own. Max did not reciprocate the gesture. “Babe-” Victoria began.

Max swiped her hand out of Victoria’s grasp, and practically spat, “I’m not your babe, okay? I’m Rachel Amber, and I’ve got a job to do.”


	4. Time's Running Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathan and the trio meet up for a long-overdue explanation.

It was a tense, long silence in the car. Max sat in the passenger seat, Kate in the back, and Victoria drove, apparently no longer disoriented either through the horrible damage her body had taken or the cocktail of alcohol and ecstasy she had consumed hours before. She simply rested one arm on the car door while they wound their way back towards town, not another soul in sight for the second morning in a row, though it was barely 1am now. How they hadn’t collapsed from exhaustion was beyond them, though that threat of death or experience of actual death thing may have helped them along. Everyone just tried to focus outside of the car, pretending they didn’t see each other.

It was Kate, then, who finally spoke, trying to roll with today’s series of extraordinary punches. “So, Rachel. Why are you in Max’s body?”  
Victoria’s teeth clenched, but she didn’t take her eyes from the road. As much as she wanted an answer to this, there was no way for her to accept whatever Rachel would say. Victoria just wanted her gone. But, as she had been assured as they were hurried into the car, Rachel needed to be here - and Victoria believed her.

Max gave out a long sigh, trying to perceive the vague shapes beyond the moon-illuminated rows of trees. “There wasn’t exactly a ‘possession for dummies’ guide sitting around where I was. I just tried to stop your friend Max here from dying of a gunshot wound back in her nightmare. I did a pretty good job, I guess,” she said, reaching up to feel where the wound should be, just below her sternum.  
“That was Kate,” Victoria replied flatly, still not peering over at the girl in her girlfriend’s skin. “She can heal people so long as they’re still alive, it looks like. I took a bullet, too, but she healed me.”

Kate had gotten the same impression somewhere along the way. Probably that whole standing up from a gun shot to the head. She was still not sure how to wrap her head (ha) around that. However, she had a more practical question for Rachel this time around: “If Max only got shot in a nightmare, why did she start bleeding?”  
Max drummed her fingers on her own knees, trying to come up with an explanation for that herself. “Well,” she began, “it wasn’t just a nightmare. It was Sean Prescott’s nightmare. And those don’t play by the same rules as other dreams. Max bled because she got shot. Just not . . . here,” she said, waving her hand around in the air as if that gestured something concrete. 

Victoria began to dig into the  _Buffy_ , anime, and comics section of her brain; “Do you mean - Nathan’s father has some sort of super power? And he used it to try to kill Max?”  
“Aaaahhhh,” Rachel said, again gesturing with her hands like the world’s most ambivalent shrug, “Kinda? I mean, he definitely has something. But he wasn’t trying to kill Max. Not this Max, at least - I don’t think she was so much as a blip on his radar. She just got in his way . . .” Max trailed off, baring her teeth a little in a slow inhale.

“Hey, you okay?” Victoria prodded, finally glancing over at Max.  
She nodded, but did not immediately speak, instead focusing on her breathing for a second. “She’s coming - back. Just find Nathan, okay?”

Victoria nodded, and Rachel took that as enough of a sign as she could to let go. She raised her fingers to her temples and began to rub at them, as if that could clear away her headache, eyes closed all the while. After maybe twenty seconds of this, though, she paused, and her eyes broke open again.  
“Where are we going?” Max asked, completely disconnected from her tone a moment ago.

Victoria reached across to the passenger seat, placing a hand on Max’s knee with little immediate elaboration. After a pause, though, she said, “We’re meeting up with Nathan, sweetie. Then we’re taking down Sean Prescott ourselves.”  
Her girlfriend may have offered little explanation, but Max understood by this point how to see the truth - as she dropped down the passenger mirror to inspect her own condition, she found a girl with long blonde hair staring back at her.  
She flipped the visor back up.

* * *

 

Nathan had never really been trained in the art of the coup, nor in being particularly restrained. So while he may have had the tactical mind to retrace Jefferson’s steps to Kate’s room after torching the tobanga, that thought had come along with the brilliance to return to his own dorm as well, quickly discovering that it had been broken into without anyone taking the time to really make it look otherwise. Considering the scene he’d seen in Marsh’s room, though, it hardly bothered him - and nobody had touched his dexomine, so he couldn’t claim to care one way or another at this point.  
  
People (his father and Jefferson) had always claimed that Nathan had no sense of urgency, and this led to his many failings. However, as the seconds seemed to tick by as he paced about outside of Frank’s RV, with Pompidou barking without restraint, he could feel the electricity of the coming storm. Nobody else could feel it. Nobody else understood how little time they had left. If they did, they’d drive faster. Cigarettes and dexomine did nothing make time move slower, but still Nathan kept pacing around, smoking his way through a pack with very little pause cigarette to cigarette. He wondered if his heart could explode, or his eyes could melt. Those would probably be better fates than whatever was going to happen before the storm hit, but no matter how much nicotine went into his system, it looked like it was not quite that easy to pump your blood to a terminal point.

He didn’t even acknowledge the Prius when it pulled in alongside his truck, too lost somewhere between Pompidou’s racket and the cold air.  _Now would be a reasonable time to snow, empty sky, not in the middle of the fucking evening while it’s still hot_. He could probably relax fine enough if he could get into Frank’s RV, but between the attack dog and the surprisingly impenetrable front door Nathan’s chances of getting access to beer or muscle relaxers were pretty minimal.

“Uhh, Kate. You should . . . stay in the car - find out how to send the police an anonymous tip about Jefferson. Max and I can handle Nathan. We’ll be right back.”

Nathan could not help but try and put up an intimidating front as Max and Victoria approached - he made a point to drop his half-burned cigarette and crush it as they approached, hoping for the love of god that they weren’t going to try and fuck with him when the stakes were so high.  
The intimidation was probably ruined when Victoria finally came into view, and Nathan saw her blood-soaked shirt.

“Fuck, Tori, are you okay? Is that your blood? What did that fucker do to you?” He instantly fixated on the one detail above all else, as if it would help to smooth the situation over.  
It did not. “I got shot, Nathan - by your photography mentor. It wasn’t exactly on the agenda but it happened. I got better.”  
Nathan nodded, scratching his jaw, where stubble had had time to emerge during his brief stay at the hospital. “Yeah, me too, somehow. Not shot, but better. Frank’s dead, though - Jefferson got him?”  
Victoria’s eyes were somehow different than when Nathan had seen them before. It’s like they weren’t really seeing, but like they were little crystalline shields embedded in her skull. Flat, foreboding. And when they came to Nathan’s, there was no friendliness there, only the flat line of tension in her jaw. “Yeah,” she confirmed. Just like that. One of Nathan’s only friends in the world out. They all went so fast, it could be hard to keep up on the uptake sometimes.

“Fuck,” came Nathan’s eulogy.

“Nathan,” Max finally began, her arms up and gesticulating almost every word, as per normal when she wasn’t keeping her satchel with her. God, she’d been shot too. Whatever trick was fixing them all up, it was fancy and convenient as hell. “I called you on the phone earlier, but I have no memory of it. What did we talk about?”

Nathan was too twitchy to overthink that too much. “I dunno: Frank’s dead, we need to meet up and kill my dad or whateverthefuck, look’s like we’ve got about,” he pulled out Kate’s phone to check - “Maybe five and a half hours to do it. Oh, and bring Kate some clothes; hey, Kate!, -” she turned to look despite being in the process of typing in a phone number, and despite her hesitance to respond to his voice at all, “- your clothes are in my truck. It’s open.”  
And here’s where it came down to. Victoria kept her arms folded over her chest, but her entire body became static as she asked, “But why? Why do we have to kill your father? How is he responsible for the storm, and how did he hurt Max in a dream?”

Nathan gave out a little laugh, but his eyes fell from the girls in front of him down to the asphalt, as if he could pry answers, clear ones, out of it. But he’d just have to give the ones that came to him. “Because everyone in this shit hole town is gonna die if we don’t before the storm’s here which, and I can’t stress this e-fucking-nough, is about five and a half hours, give or take a half. And the storm is here to kill him, so this is my best plan - which you -” he said, gesturing at Max, “fucking supported earlier, so.  
“And for how he did that,” again gesturing at Max, though specifically her stomach this time, “well, I don’t know, that’s a new approach to me. But he gets into people’s heads and does creepy shit, all right? I don’t know everything he can do but killing you in a dream sounds about right. His personal favorite is outright wearing you like a sock puppet, but there’s some shit, like with what he did to Rachel, where I don’t even know how it works, man, but it does.” He shrugged, trying to toss this off casually, but well aware that he had no idea of the full extent of his father’s power at this point. As he looked beyond the girls and the cars at the beached whales lined up down the sand, he considered the idea that there might be no ‘extent’ - or, at least, no limit.

That seemed to jog Victoria’s memory, though, because she quickly responded with another question, “Rachel. Did you set Rachel free somehow?”  
Nathan nodded, wishing he had kept the remaining half of his cigarette, but it was the last one in his pack, and he’d fucked himself there. He sort of giggled to himself, then wiped under his nose with a quick swipe. “Yeah, like, I guess. My fucking dad, man, he asked me to look out for that totem - the Tobanga, you know - outside the dorms when I got to Blackwell. I just couldn’t figure out why, like, what the fuck, come on? But I figured it out, huh? I set that fucking thing on fire and she’s out there now, isn’t she? He’s probably freaking the fuck out about it, but I guess there goes any sneaky version of this plan to kill him.” Nathan made the same sort of gesture at empty space that Rachel had made earlier, as if the air were some definite place.

Victoria offered her empty hand towards Max now, and her voice returned to an angry state, “Rachel isn’t ‘out there’, Nathan: she’s right here. She’s in Max’s body, and the two keep switching back and forth controlling it. Rachel’s the one who called you earlier, and she’s the one who warned us about your dad.”

Nathan’s eyes went wide, and he finally stopped twitching as he spoke - at least for the moment. Then he pointed with both fingers towards Max. “Wait, like, she’s in Max’s body? Both of them? What the fuck? Who’s here now?”  
Max rolled her eyes and said, “It’s me, dumbass, Max. I met Rachel in my dream when your dad tried to murder . . . another me. From another world. And now, I keep blacking out. And Rachel takes me over.”  
In instinctive response to Max’s tone, Victoria reached out and placed her palm on Max’s shoulder, rubbing gently, while Nathan worked on getting his head around that. He wasn’t even going to try and deal with the ‘another world’ comment

“Well, okay, then half the time we’ve got someone useful on the team, all right. Rachel and I can probably get into Pan Estates all right - she and I, uh, we went there a few times, and we’d probably know our way around best. You guys kept my gun, right? - whatever my dad can do, I’m pretty sure he dies to fucking bullets, so I’m sure between Rachel and I we can put one in his face.”

Max just acted repelled in response to both Nathan’s implication that she was useless as well as . . . whatever he meant by he and Rachel spending time at Pan Estates. Victoria, though, had something more up front to say: “You’re going to want Kate, too.”  
Nathan’s eyebrows quirked up incredulously; “Marsh? Why the fuck would we-”  
“She was beaten, drugged, executed, stood back up, was shot repeatedly in the torso, and still managed to take Jefferson down by herself. I think she has a better chance against your dad than any of us.”

Nathan’s mouth remained agape as he peered past those two, only capable of seeing the outline of Kate’s arms as she worked on putting her new outfit on. He gestured at the Prius. “Marsh?”

Victoria and Max looked at each other for a moment, both remembering acutely those moments in which they had nearly died only for Kate to save them both singlehandedly after they literally fucked everything up. Then they looked back to Nathan.  
“Yeah,” Max assured him.  
“And I’ve got your gun,” Victoria added, but did not offer to return it.

Nathan recomposed himself. “So, uh, we got anything else?”

They all took a moment to consider their assets, and, after another moment of inspecting the RV, Max had a small offer. “I can get into the RV, and we can take Pompidou, plus anything Frank has in there.”

Victoria looked at her questioningly. “How? Another one of your camera tricks?”  
Max shook her head, beginning to walk along the side of the RV. “Nah - RVs like these have roof access, legitimate or otherwise. Plus, Pompidou likes me, unlike you two, so that won’t be a problem.”  
“Shit,” Nathan whined, having never heard or thought of that.

As Max ascended the ladder of the RV and began to search for access, Nathan checked Kate’s phone again. “Five hours, if we’re lucky. I hope you’re ready, because we’re out of time. It’s time to put an end to this.”


	5. So, Um

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long and awkward car ride with the gang as they ready themselves for a little session of murder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been edited, starting at the "*" near the end. Please note the change if you are re-reading.

Despite all other sensibilities, everyone present was raised on the west coast and would not accept the wastefulness of taking two separate cars to a single murder. With Nathan’s horrible gas mileage and equally terrible seating, Max, Victoria, Kate, Nathan, and a whining Pompidou piled into the Prius with Max and Kate in back to keep Pompidou calm for the duration of the trip. Seeing as Nathan was the only one to have slept in the past twenty-two or so hours, and nobody but Victoria realized he was on anything, he was the natural candidate to drive everyone to Pan Estates.  
Thus began a series of awkward conversations that nobody particularly wanted to have - but what can you do when the radio is shit so early in the morning?

“So, um...” Kate began about ten minutes into their drive, hands lain over one another, sitting directly behind Victoria. “Nathan. Why are we going to Pan Estates, and not your house?”  
Nathan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, prone to the same sorts of rhythmic patterns that irritated people that Max did as well. Out of all the people to explain his family dynamic to, Kate did not appear highly on the list. Still. It was sort of relevant information at this point. “My dad likes to oversee Pan Estates’ construction, so he only comes home on weekends.” And that was that. A totally normal family relationship, albeit with a distant father too involved with this work.

Kate seemed to be struggling to form the right questions. “Then - okay. So what’s our plan? We drive up, look for your dad, kill him, and poof, no storm? I mean, that just sounds a little . . . iffy.”  
Nathan let out a groan of agitation, tired of being questioned on his tactics. It’s not like preventing supernatural disasters had a handbook. “Jesus fucking christ - look, if you think you can be diplomatic with a tornado, go ahead. But it’s here for him, and this is my best idea, and it’d be really cool if you could use your crazy healing shit to keep us alive in the process.”  
Kate returned to her quiet, but Max was always ready to investigate things, especially when they were on the edge of reason. “How do you know the storm is here for him?” Her voice was barely audible, but it was enough.

Nathan sighed, just focusing on the road while the seconds ticked by. “I just do, alright?”  
And they returned to silence.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

At least, until it was Nathan’s turn to get curious. He just lacked the gentleness of Max or Kate. “So, how is it going to work when you fuck now?” he asked, turning to look at Victoria a little bit near the end of his question, then returning his eyes to the road.  
Predictably, nobody responded to that.  
“I mean, like, with the Rachel-Max double body thing. Like, what if you were having sex, and Max blacked out, and suddenly, y’know, boom, there’s Rachel. Or if she didn’t want to say anything because it was too weird so she just sort of kept going but you thought it was Max.”

Victoria just stared at him through squinting eyes to emphasize the level of stupidity in that question, or at least it’s timing. “What the fuck?” she asked.  
Nathan seemed surprised by her response - “What? It’s a serious question. It’s got to be weird after the stuff with you and Rachel.”

Victoria buried her face in her hands as she groaned in frustration, preferring her vague and frustrating best friend right now over the casual-talking asshole to her left. “This doesn’t really seem like the time to predict any possible changes to our sex life, Nathan, we’re trying to prevent the deaths of thousands of people.”  
Nathan gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Well, this seems like the time, honestly - either we’re all gonna die in a suicidal attack or we’ll survive and I assume you’d have some sort of celebratory lesbian . . . thing.”  
Max also had her face buried in her hands by this point, whereas Kate mostly maintained her distance by petting Pompidou and pretending not to hear anything while her eyes occasionally darted between the other occupants of the car to gauge their reactions, which were mostly pretty funny.

“For the last time, Nathan,” Victoria issued, exhausted, “We don’t have lesbian pheromones and we don’t have tropeish sex at the end of every taxing ordeal. We mostly sleep, and work on very convincing stories to tell the police. What are we telling the police, by the way, if we pull this off?”

Surprisingly, Max had an answer for that.  _“Ding dong the witch is dead,”_  she sang, as well as she could considering her voice was actually pretty dead. Victoria and Kate looked at her expectantly for a bit more of an explanation. She shrugged. “What? I’ve been here for all of two months and I know everyone hates Nathan’s dad. Who wouldn’t be relieved if he turned up dead, especially if they learn about all the women he helped kidnap?”

“Uh-” Nathan began, ready to start a listing of all of the people who depended on his dad. But he quickly began to realize that nobody depended on his dad so much has they needed his money, his impact on Arcadia Bay, and that for the most part they would be relieved to be rid of it. People would be better off with his father dead, storm or no storm. But Nathan, even if he managed to inherit all of his father’s possessions as his will currently dictated, and somehow evaded police custody, would never be able to handle all of these assets, and the Prescott legacy would likely crumble within months. His mom would have cared. But perhaps that meant it was better that she was dead ahead of her husband. “Whatever,” Nathan dismissed.

Quick to distract and quick to agitate, Nathan reached out for yet another ludicrous conversation starter to take the attention off of him and into the troop of teenage girls he was driving to almost certain doom. “So, did you guys resolve that kiss thing between Vic and Kate or are you still getting around to that?”

Kate immediately tensed up at this being voiced aloud and everyone knowing about it, and as she tried to stammer out a protest, Victoria did much the same, with slightly better success, “Hey, now, come on - what the hell Nate let’s just-”  
“We addressed it,” Max spoke up flatly, but this only drew a look of horror from Kate towards the girl on the other side of the dog from her.

Nathan whistled, and Kate was finally able to find some words, “Victoria told you? Oh, goodness, Max, I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure how to talk to you about it and I’m really sorry I didn’t mean, I mean, I, uh, Victoria was just sort of feeling my feelings and it got a little - ooh god, uh,” she kept fiddling around with her hands far too much, especially the one that kept twitching along Pompidou’s fur like the least consistent bout of petting imaginable, but Max’s hand reached out and fell over hers, quelling the agitation and holding Kate a little more still.

“No, no, Kate, it’s okay. I love Victoria, too. I get it, if anyone does.” Max rubbed her thumb over the back of Kate’s hand, but the little blonde could do nothing but sink into a deep red state of mortification at her exposure, which did a very good job at completing Nathan’s desire to take the attention off of him.  
Now Victoria almost seemed to come along to Nathan’s line of thinking, and gave out a bit of a chuckle, strained though it was. “It’s all right, Kate. If we get through this, we can figure it all out. We might have to in ladies’ prison, or whatever.”

For their own various reasons, everyone in the car gave out a bit of a laugh at that, except Pompidou, who mostly was just looking confused at the sudden lack of petting from Kate.  
“Orange is the New Blackwell,” Max offered.  
Her thumb kept tracing circles on Kate’s palm, and as Victoria peered over the shoulder of her seat, she realized that looked like the most normal thing in the world, even when Kate turned her hand around to place her thumb around Max’s fingers, and the two let their hands lay on Pompidou’s back.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Welcome back, Rachel,” Victoria let out coldly as Max lay her head against the cold glass to soothe her headache, eyes closed as if it would hold back the minimal stimulation of the car.  
“Yeah, hey again Tori.” She let her eyes slide open to inspect her newfound seat in the car, and was promptly surprised to find a dog’s head in her lap. “Oh my god, Pomidou!” she let out uncharacteristically excitedly, and leaned down to wrap her arms around the dog’s shoulders, dropping little kisses on his head. He growled for a moment in response to this unexpected intrusion, but when she let up the hug a little he seemed to appreciate the sudden increase in warmth and scratching and just lay his head back down. “I’m so happy to see you, buddy, hey, hey, hey,” she crooned, finally breaking apart the collectedness she had demonstrated since they left the photo studio. “God, I’m so happy you’re safe.”

Kate withdrew a little into her corner of the car, recognizing that her moment with Max was gone and struggling to adjust to the presence of someone new. It was clear enough when it was Rachel present through changes in her posture, a huge increase in inflection and volume, and an absence of eyes that darted over to check on the others occasionally. Rachel fixated, and barely seemed to acknowledge the others were there.  
Finally, though, Rachel regrouped to address the clear changes. “So, I take it we met up and we’re headed to Pan Estates now? Hey, Nathan, did you happen to bring a gun with you?”

Nathan shook his head, but Victoria could see him shiver in response to being addressed, immediately recognized it - it was freakish to hear Rachel speak with Max’s voice, going beyond how freakish it was to hear Rachel speak again overall. “No, but you did,” Nathan provided in addition to his negative.  
Rachel deflated a little to hear that they only had a single gun available, but quickly followed up to ask: “So, what’s our total stock for taking down your dad? We have decidedly less here than they’ve got on the other side, so I just want to know what our chances are.”

Luckily, this was one of the ways in which Victoria was good of keeping track of things, so she broke down the summary that Max had initially provided as they set out, along with her own thoughts. “In descending relevance: Pistol, fully-loaded with twelve shots. Wooden bat. Switchblade. On the personal side, Kate can regenerate herself as well as us through touch. I can feel other people’s feelings through eye contact. You, or at least Max, can see alternate realities through the camera I bought her. Pompidou is a dog, and, I don’t know, kind of a mean one.”  
Pompidou and Rachel did not appreciate this sentiment.

Nathan cleared his throat as Victoria was apparently done. “I, ah. I see the future, or whatever. Just, like, you know, sometimes.”  
Silence.  
Then, “Huh,” Rachel said.

Victoria groaned a little, clearly and reasonably overwhelmed, and leaned her forehead against the dashboard. “Why is Arcadia Bay filled with more people with super powers than Marvel’s New York? It’s just a little town on the Oregon coast.”

“Well,” Nathan and Rachel said nearly in unison, then paused hearing the other person.  
“You first,” Rachel said, eager to get more information from this reality.  
Nathan swallowed, not entirely sure where to start, or how even to explain what was going on to everyone. “So, um,” he started, then swallowed again, displaying a hesitation very familiar to Rachel and Victoria but completely new to Kate. It left her rather ill at ease.  
“So, I don’t know how it works exactly, but I know Arcadia Bay is not just a random town in Oregon. It’s alive. There’s something here that . . . well, like, my dad’s dad’s dad’s dad found, and we use it for the sort of shit you’re talking about. I have, fuck, I don’t know, visions I guess? It can be really goddamn hard to tell what they are, but they’re stuff from the future. My dad is some weird druggie sandman. And I hear my great-granddad could like store diseases and shit but never got sick, but was just like a walking plague. I don’t really know how you fuckers all got powers, though, I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Wait, Nate,” Victoria stopped, sitting up in her seat, a new thought occurring to her. “When you’re having an episode . . . are you having a vision?”  
Nathan shook his head, still not wanting to look away from the road when it was so dark. “No, Tori. Lucky for this town, I’ve been sick for so long I can’t even tell the difference between a vision and a hallucination, and my meds kill both if I take them right. They also make sure my dad can be in my head wheneverthefuck he wants, though - s’why I haven’t been taking them, at least not ‘as prescribed’, for the past few months. I may be out of commission as a person, but I’m out of commission as my father’s son, too.”

Rachel sat forward in her seat a little, and asked almost casually, “You stopped after you killed me, didn’t you?”  
Nathan’s following pause was long, and everyone looked to him, finally, for his confession of everything. They all knew he was guilty, but for Victoria and Kate, they just wanted him to know what he had done, to know that this was all real - and, on some level, hoped that it wasn’t.   
His reply was lower, filled with crags of sound: “Yeah.”  
And back to silence.

Nobody knew where to look. Victoria couldn’t look at Rachel because she was in Max’s skin, a violation she had to literally overlook, nor could she look at Nathan, her best friend who kidnapped and murdered his own friends, who must have had plans to kidnap and potentially murder her as well. Kate could not look at anyone, but there was little for her to look at outside, so she just gazed aimlessly out the window, not even stroking Pompidou to avoid any potential contact with Rachel. Nathan had to keep his eyes on the road, but he only wanted to run away, unable to look back at the girl he murdered or any of his potential victims.

At least Kate had something to say, something to help complete the story. “So, Rachel. What do you know about what happened to us - the powers.” She leaned back against the car door, turning her body to look at Rachel. Max. The little brunette with freckles all over her face from Seattle. The mysterious, popular girl who had vanished without a trace from Blackwell. The one who had brought the FBI to Arcadia Bay when she had been here, in some form, all along.  
Rachel’s short fingers were buried in her too-thick bob as she thought of a way to explain. “Well . . . most of what Nathan said is new to me, but some of what I know is from his dad, too, some of it is what I’m sure of.  
“When I was sixteen, I started to notice some stuff was . . . different for me. The way people treated me started to change. I don’t know, it was subtle at first - people just accepted me, listened to me wherever I went. But I started to notice that whatever I said wasn’t always what I meant, or what I wanted to say. I always knew and did what people wanted, or what they needed to accept me, but it was automatic, reflexive - I, I had to fight to be what I thought it was. I never really thought of it as magical, or a power, or anything like that, even though it was great in school - I just figured I had figured school out - until I met... Mark. Mr. Jefferson.” She swallowed, preparing to continue.

But Victoria interjected, “So, wait. Your power was doing or saying whatever other people wanted, but perfectly? Like, a telepathic mindslave to everyone around you?”  
Rachel shook her head, trying to say it better. “No, no, I mean, I could stop it if I had to, if I tried to, and it wasn’t just what people thought they needed from me, it was often something more . . . complicated. Sometimes I was okay with that, and I liked just  _knowing_  what to do, like with Chloe. But, other times . . .”

Nobody even considered the idea that whatever Chloe she was talking about was the Chloe they had seen Wednesday night, and they just let her words hang for a little while. But for Nathan and Victoria, it was a moment to acknowledge the girl they had known for more of what she was. Even if this wasn’t the girl they had ever known.

“But, um. It didn’t end after I died. I mean, nothing ended. I was still in Arcadia Bay, and I still couldn’t get out. Just, nobody could see me, nobody could hear me. I was a ghost, or something like that - but not quite, I don’t think, because animals still seemed to know when I was around. Some did, at least, but they never ran away from me or anything. And I began to learn things, to know them, as if I had always known them - I often didn’t realize I knew them, because they were just like memories, but they never happened to me. I learned that Arcadia Bay is alive, but that it was in pain, and it had needed my help. And I wasn’t the only one it had ever asked. But, instead, there was a string of girls that Arcadia Bay chose to protect it and to heal it. I learned that I had failed, but that I wasn’t alone that it . . . the Bay was sorry that it had hurt me. But it asked for my help again, to help find someone new to protect it.”

Kate took a breath as if she were about to interrupt, and Rachel paused so she could get her question out.  
“So, was that us? Victoria, Max, and I? Is that why we got these powers?”

Rachel shook her head, and clarified, “No, no, none of you. I . . . I chose Nathan. I thought he was the only one who would be able to stop his father, the only one who knew enough to use his powers to stop him. But, I messed up. He didn’t think I was real, and seeing him again made me so . . . angry. I confronted him, and he ended up telling his father he was seeing me. I didn’t know how, then, or even really now, but Sean found me where I was and he. Entombed me? Sealed me away? I lost everything that I was, like dying finally, but my mind was still there, and I could still hear things sometimes, but that was it. That was it until a few hours ago, when Nathan set me free. I knew Maxine Caulfield got the powers after me, but this isn’t . . . well, this isn’t the same Maxine Caulfield.”

“It’s Max, never Maxine,” Victoria corrected, then continued, “But what do you mean by that?”

Rachel shrugged. It had been so long since she’d really talked to someone for one thing, and much, much longer since she’d not had some interior voice telling her what to say and how to say it. “You’re not the Victoria Chase I know. This isn’t the Kate Marsh who committed suicide Tuesday. And this Max isn’t the Max who tried to save her. You’re all someone else. The Max Caulfield I knew was wearing brown, and she’s probably dead right now. And Nathan . . . the Nathan I know, he’s dead too. And yet, here we are.”

“Uh, Rach?” Nathan asked. “Kate never died. And, you know, neither did I.”

“No, no . . . I did. I met her. Another Kate Marsh. She killed herself.”

Everyone’s eyes turned towards Kate, including a side eye from Nathan. That was not quite what they had expected to hear. Thus, she swallowed, and elaborated, “Well, I mean, I sort of died. And I kinda . . . I don’t know, stuff happened!” She seemed frustrated by her inability to explain that place that Here, but Not Here. “But she was there. And she died.”

Victoria's hands flew into the air as a nearly inhuman howl of exasperation escaped her mouth. “AAAAAHHHH  **WHAT - THE - FUCK - EVER**! I don’t know what the FUCK is going on but we can fix it by killing Sean mother _fucking_  Prescott, right?”

Rachel nodded, sitting forward in her seat. Kate look thoroughly startled, having never seen frustration get the better of Victoria. Nathan just let a small smile cross his face.  
“Yeah,” Rachel confirmed. “It looks like, in this reality, we were the chosen three girls to save Arcadia Bay. And taking him down is the only chance we’ve  got.”

“Got it,” Victoria nodded, “At least the town-that’s-alive can acknowledge that I’m a girl while compelling me to kill a man.”

*“Well, that’s not the only good news,” Nathan said, barely registering that comment, whereas Rachel flinched. "We're almost there." He had slowed somewhat as he began to search for the sign that would indicate where to turn. The new tension brought everyone's eyes front and center, especially as they noticed headlights on in the first car - a white pick-up - they had seen since they'd been out of town. Whoever it was, the dickwad had their brights on, and Nathan brought a hand up to shield his eyes as well as he could while he drove.  
"What does this asshole think he's do-"

"Nathan - watch out!"  
He had noticed it at the same time as Victoria - just as the car swerved onto their side of the road, accelerating, he jerked the Prius sharply to the right.  
It wasn't enough. The truck slammed right into the driver's side of the car, and everything was spinning, broken glass.


	6. Obstacles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate and the others work to recover from the car crash, before being met with one more unexpected obstacle. Some unexpected sacrifices have to be made for Arcadia Bay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -This chapter will not be posted to Tumblr until the Finale is complete or I get artwork for each section of the Finale. If you are an AO3 reader - congrats, you're getting bite-sized chunks of the finale instead of a 10,000 word suckerpunch finish.  
> \- If you have not read the edited conclusion to Chapter 5 of Polarized: "So, Um" - do so, starting at the "*".

Everything inside Kate felt shredded. It was a new kind of pain, like many she had experienced tonight - like there was liquid fire dripping from her shoulder and into arms she could barely seem to feel at all. Her arms were wrapped around Pompidou’s body, but they did not respond to her at all - Pompidou kept whipping around in a frenzy, but her arms would not respond to anything, no matter how hurt they were. Her shoulders were warped, bones highlighting the flesh underneath her shirt, and everywhere around them there was a stabbing pain. Different though this time, because there was no blood. None from her, at least.

 

Max looked like she was out cold, and unlike Kate, her face and body were cut and bleeding as she sat hunched over, as if suspended by her seatbelt. Nathan was moving, bloodied though he was, but without any real purpose - he did not seem to know what was going on. Only Victoria was alert after the crash, and she turned in her seat to look at Kate and Max in the back seat. 

“Max? Max, are you okay?” Victoria unclipped her seatbelt, noticing finally the crushed portion of the car on the driver’s side somewhere between Nathan and Max’s seats. As she leaned out of her seat to reach Max, however, she and Kate both recognized something else moving - someone emerging from the white truck that had struck them. And it wasn’t some confused, stumbling victim of an accident - it was a man in a heavy coat, bleeding from the side of the head and with small cuts all over his face and neck. And he was heading straight towards the Prius that had been knocked off to the side of the road.

His eyes found hers, just for a moment, and she remembered the feeling she felt. Cold, cold rage, like that night Trevor beat Nathan.

 

Instead of reaching for Max, Victoria leaned over into the back and retrieved the bat underneath Pompidou’s paws, struggling for a moment to get it away from the battered dog before she opened her door. The man reached through the shattered window and unclasped Max’s seatbelt, then grabbed her underneath her arms to haul her outside of the car, just letting her body drop to the ground as soon as most of her was out.

“No - NO!” Kate screamed as the man dropped down, his large hands wrapping around Max’s throat. Although the pain was leaving her body, she still could not move her arms, and simply watched the fury on the man’s face as he strangled Max, Max who she couldn’t see - for a few seconds.

 

Victoria didn’t have anything to say before she started swinging. There was just the cracking sound of flesh on wood before the man’s face hit the side of the car. Then Victoria took a step up and smashed the bat into his face again with the same sickening noise. She dropped the bat on the ground to push the man’s body entirely to the dirt, then sat over Max in much the same position that he had, just with a very, very different look on her face.

“Max? Max, are you okay? You breathing baby? . . . Okay, okay, we just need to - Kate, can you help me? Max doesn’t look good.”

Nathan finally seemed to be coming to, but he was struggling a lot more with his air bags than Victoria had - Kate just noticed the click of his seatbelt, but he sat still as it slipped off most of his body.

“I . . . I can’t move, Tori. My arms, they’re not working. I can move my legs but I can’t get out.”

 

Victoria’s hand was quick to her forehead, pushing her hair away from her forehead while she tried to think. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Okay, your shoulders must be dislocated - plus . . . something extra, if you can’t move them at all. You should be able to heal the other stuff, but. Okay.” She pushed herself back up and around the backside of the car, glad that she could simply open Kate’s door and unbuckle the seatbelt, since Max and Nathan’s doors were likely unusable at this point. Kate turned in her seat, and Victoria finally got a proper look at Kate’s arms - or rather, her shoulders. Both looked like they had been pulled from their sockets, and Kate’s right arm had blood staining her right sleeve, but it looked like the wound had already closed. The shoulders looked . . . wrong, though - they had been pulled even more after being dislocated, tearing apart the muscle. Victoria had no idea if she could even relocate them.   
“Shit,” Nathan whimpered in his seat.

“Shit, fuck,” she murmured, weighing her options. Then: “Kate, this is going to hurt, but I’m going to take you over to Max so you can touch her, then I’ll try and set your arm, okay?” God, the panic that she felt so often when she looked into Kate’s eyes was unbearable. And even though Kate only took a brief second to nod and say ‘yes,’ Victoria could feel the hesitation and fear inside of her. She absolutely did not want to do that - neither of them did. But, Max.

 

Victoria slipped her arms behind Kate’s back and underneath her legs, and dragged her out of the car, Pompidou quickly hopping out after her to go find Max. Immediately, she stumbled, and the two nearly dropped to the ground; Victoria suddenly recognized how dizzy she was, and the sudden burning in her thighs did little to help her stand. Nevertheless, with a groan, she forced herself to stand. The point of contact between her hand and the back of Kate’s leg seemed to spread through her body slowly, making her stronger as she pulled herself to the other side of the car, leaning Kate against the side of the trunk close to Max. Victoria let go of her, then moved to Max’s other side, pulling up her shirt to show her stomach, giving Kate plenty of surface.   
As Kate inched alongside the car, she finally saw the bloody-faced man again, with half of his face somewhat limp. He might have shattered his eye socket. “Is he dead?” she asked, leaning her head over to the man, as if there was anyone else resembling a corpse that she wasn’t about to heal.

“I don’t know,” Victoria admitted as Kate crouched down, resting her knees on Max’s stomach with more force than she would like to. “But don’t . . . touch him. We can’t risk him right now.”

 

Kate nodded, though she was disturbed by the idea that it was so easy to help someone, and yet she would simply have to neglect him. Even if that possibly meant his death. She had accepted, as well as she might, what they had to do with Sean Prescott. But some random man . . . “Who is he?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Victoria said, instead focusing, looking for some response from Max - or Rachel, whomever would be waking up from this.

 

“What happened?” Nathan’s car door opened, somehow, and his feet appeared the second before he leaned out of the car, more to breathe than to see what was going on. Still, he did not quite understand what he was looking at, between the panting Victoria, dead?bloody guy, and Kate sort of sitting on Max. Except, wait, no, he did understand the part of the guy with his face nearly caved in. “Shit, that’s the . . . uh . . . fuck. The night guy. The night manager over in Pan Estates. Daryl, I think. Or Dwayne. D-sound. What’s he doing here?”

 

“He hit us with his car,” Victoria said, as if the white pick up truck behind her should automatically explain that. “And he tried to kill Max. Plus the car crash.”

 

“Fuck,” he let out, raising a hand to his face, only to quickly note lines of blood smeared beneath his nose. “Oh, god,” he said, in quick examination of his own face with his hands, plus the stickiness of his own blood. “My dad musta . . . I don’t know, but I don’t think he did this himself. My dad must have drugged him, or got him drunk enough to control, or something.”

 

“Why would an employee be there so late?” Kate asked, finally looking up from Max, still trying to balance well enough that she wasn’t crushing Max’s gut.

 

“There’s only a few buildings left,” Nathan explained, ducking back into the car to look for napkins in the glove compartment, but finding none. He just took to pinching his nose instead as he got out, creating a warped, plugged tone, “Too few for the whole crew to work on, but my dad still thinks the storm’s coming in a few months, and he wants the project done by then. So, Daryl. Night. Yeah.”   
  


Then, there was coughing, and everyone’s attention shifted as Max sputtered, struggling to get air in her lungs again, and Kate did her best to stand back up and give her some space. Victoria approached and sat down to face her, while Nathan limped over to the truck, hoping to find something for his bleeding inside of it.    
“Max? Is that you? Are you okay?” Victoria reached out for her hand, but quickly found it sliding down to escape hers. Ah.

“No such luck, Chase,” Rachel said, and slowly pushed her body upright, a hand moving quickly up to her head, where drying blood was beginning to cake in the absence of an open wound. “Fuck, Kate, that is a . . . great power, thank you. Who’s um, the guy,” she said, pointing at the mutilated man a few feet from her. For some reason, after what she’d seen of Jefferson and Frank, this seemed to bother her very little.

 

Kate was quick to withdraw when it was Rachel who woke up, so she stepped past the other two girls and into the middle of the road, after Nathan. “Nathan!” He turned to look at her, and she continued, “Your nose. And face and stuff. I can fix it.”

He gave her a peculiar look for a moment - not only because she looked weird as shit with her shoulders fucked up but also because the last time she’d healed him, it hadn’t been nearly so friendly. They’d probably both be a lot more comfortable being nowhere near each other, but, well . . . he didn’t exactly enjoy bleeding all over his own face.

“Your arms. I can help you get your shoulder relocated if you can get me to stop bleeding.”

Kate just nodded at this little contract, and he gestured her over to the truck, trying to figure out just how hard it would be to get them back in place, and having no way to account for her healing.

Nathan nodded towards the side of the truck, which barely had a dent in it after the collision, and said, “You first. You’re going to want to stand against that, and, um, yell if you feel the need. I’ll probably just heal passively from touching you.”

Something about this seemed pretty strange to Kate - “You sure you know how to relocate shoulders?”

“Yeah, I’ve . . . picked it up.”

 

“FUCK!”

Victoria blinked, looking away from Rachel over at Kate, sporting a freshly usable arm that she was clearly moving way too much for somebody who had just regained function.

“Huh, shit. I had no idea she even knew what swear words were.”

 

* * *

 

Begin:  [ The Rapture - Echoes ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bibXZUZVonw)

 

It turned out that the truck was quite the upgrade from the Prius. Not in terms of space, exactly, as no more than three people could fit in the cabin, which ended up being converted instead into two people and a dog. Despite Pompidou’s distaste for them both, he ended up wedged between Victoria, the fresh, no-concussion driver, and Nathan, finally sporting his gun away, which he would just not stop fidgeting with against all recommendations. Rachel sat crouched in the bed of the truck behind Victoria with Frank’s baseball bat at the ready, while Kate remained hidden near the central window in the back, capable of reaching in to heal the two in front or Rachel if need be. Nobody was fucking with them as they drove along the lengthy driveway of Pan Estates, which needed at least enough isolation to avoid the sounds of the freeway at all hours.

They finally came upon the complex, which quickly spidered out in multiple directions, each one bearing a perfectly human name, with the central road being labeled as ‘Aaron st’. However, they came upon a rather unexpected and puzzling problem - every road, as well as good portions of the ground between them, was blocked off with a car. Completely different cars across the board, but at least one was immediately recognizable, to Kate at least.

“Hey, isn’t that Warren’s new car? The blue one, there.”

She pointed in the darkness where none but Rachel could see, and she didn’t have a clue who Warren was, so she just shrugged. Nevertheless, that comment was enough for Nathan to swear.

“Fuck! The End of the World Party was tonight.”

Victoria looked over at him, confused, “Huh - yeah? I mean, why would that m…” She turned back to the wall of cars in front of them. “Oh god.”

Nathan leaned out of the window of the truck and looked around, and quickly had his fears confirmed. “Vic, drive around them - drive now!”

“What? I don’t-” 

Kate screamed, and Victoria began to drive, turning sharply in hopes of skirting around the blockade. But there was just not enough time. Maybe two dozen kids swarmed out from the treeline and charged at a dead sprint towards the pickup, and even with four-wheel drive it couldn’t maneuver quickly over the rough ground. They had no weapons, and honestly weren’t the steadiest, but soon Zachary had grabbed onto the side of the truck bed and begun to hoist himself up. Rachel was on that quick, and slammed the bat down on his hand - he was quick to fall to the ground and be left behind, but soon their other classmates had closed in. Warren got swatted aside before ever being able to touch the truck. River grabbed the edge of Victoria’s window, but Victoria had prepared for something like that - she grabbed the hair of the blonde girl jogging alongside her and forced her head as hard as she could against the window’s edge, dazing her enough that she stumbled and fell down.

They were beginning to pick up speed. Victoria had finally made it around the edge of the cars, and finally had the chance to aim back towards the road, where she’d be able to leave the kids far behind. Her eyes darted to her side mirror, where she saw Logan seemingly playing tug-of-war with Rachel over the bat, which he managed to wrap a meaty hand around. Fuck these athletic boys, shit! Rachel shoved forward with the bat, making him lose his momentum and stumble, but the bat was wrenched from her hands at the same time, and the girls in the back found themselves defenseless. There wasn’t a lot Nathan could do, either . . . without murdering their friends from school.

She couldn’t see it in her side mirror, but Victoria changed her vision over to her rear view mirror, and she saw that things were going to shit fast. No one was keeping up with them anymore, but one person had managed to get into the bed of the truck, feet inside and everything. Dana Ward. Fuck, fuck, fuck, where were the tiny girls, like Stella?

“Dana?!” Kate asked at nearly a scream. “Dana, don’t do this, you don’t need to do this. We can stop - NO, DANA, LET ME GO, DANA, NO PLEASE DANA DON’T-” and with little adieu, Kate was rolled out the back of the truck, promptly plopping into the cold dirt before the others managed to catch up to her.

“Fuck,” Nathan exclaimed, and unfastened his seatbelt, turning around in his seat to aim the pistol through the middle window at the back of the truck.

“Nathan, no!” Victoria exclaimed, slapping his arm down, while she saw Rachel turn and rush Dana . . . with a little too much success. She grabbed the tall cheerleader around the waist but didn’t seem to sufficiently plan for the low perimeter of the truck bed, for they both collapsed against it for a moment, hanging there for a moment.

 

She couldn’t see anything more, but Nathan flinched back as Dana managed to push Rachel back up, and shove them back further towards the cab of the truck, with Rachel’s back quickly forced against the cab of the car, her legs close to the window Nathan had been aiming out of.

They could hear more yelling, “DON’T GO BACK FOR KATE, OR FOR ME, OKAY? HE’LL TRY AND KILL US IN THAT OTHER PLACE, OUT OF OUR BODIES! JUST KILL HIM, OKAY? SAVE ARCADIA!”

There was some grunting as Rachel repeatedly shoved her knee into Dana’s gut, but a moment later, both of them toppled from the side of the truck.

Victoria kept a hand on the wheel, but turned around and leaned outside of her car, rapidly decelerating. “MAX! MAX!”

But Nathan’s hand kept the steering wheel steady, and his was the only reply she got: “If we try and get them, we’re all dead, okay? You, me, and who knows how many of them. I know where he is. Drive, Tori, drive.”

 

And she couldn’t believe it, but she did. She hit the road, and shoved the pedal down as far as it would go.


	7. Dark Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate and Max are restrained in a basement while Sean tries to discern what they know. Meanwhile, Victoria and Nathan infiltrate Sean's bunker, and step right into the dark room, which holds haunting memories for a boy who never knows whether to trust what he sees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter is still subject to editing.

 

Kate Marsh was not still and malleable as she was dragged into yet another basement. Everything hurt her, but something had broken her, freed her that night, and the hurt didn’t stop her from struggling. These teenagers, these classmates of her who were exhausted and beaten from running after a speeding truck, they felt fatigue, they felt pain, even if something were controlling their minds. And this time, she wasn’t just struggling to save herself, she was struggling to save Max Caulfield, who had bled too many times tonight.

But it didn’t matter. There were just so many of them. She knew many of their names: Warren, Taylor, Dana, Zachary, Logan, Juliet. And many she didn’t know. Some were her friends. Some had been her tormentors. But that no longer divided them - as she wrestled her way from two of them, three of them, more pinned her and dragged her through the halls of one of the many empty houses, dragged her down the carpeted stairs into another clean, though much more poorly lit basement along with Max. She didn’t know where they got it, but soon duct tape bound her hands and ankles, much like the Kate from the other side.

Max was bound and left lying where she was, but it seemed Sean didn’t know how to fix the problem that was Kate. This was not some well-equipped bunker filled with tranquilizers that couldn’t keep her under. When they hit her, her bones would not break, her skin would break for only a moment, leaving a brief stain of blood before it closed again.

After a while - it could not have been more than mere minutes, but time felt so strange when people wanted to hurt you - they just gave up. Many remained in the basement, but others returned to the surface, to go assist those who had run after the truck.

Dana. Warren. Juliet. Two that Kate did not recognize - a girl with long blonde hair, a lot like Taylor’s but brighter, and a hispanic boy with short brown hair. These were her guards. These were the puppets of Sean Prescott. She looked into their slow-blinking, flat eyes.

She noticed blood staining Dana’s jeans from the fall from the truck, rips of her jeans and skin. It was filled with dirt, and it was clear she hadn’t done anything to clean it. But, at least, it didn’t look like she was bleeding anymore.

“I’m sorry, you guys, for what Nathan’s dad did to you. I know you don’t want to hurt me, or Max. I’m so sorry.”

Dana mumbled, “Sorry.”

Kate stared.

The others stared.

Dana stopped staring.

 

\--

 

“We don’t have a lot of time - take a right here.” Nathan gestured at a sign that would have been invisible if it weren’t for the full moon. Somehow, for once, he seemed to have everything together, while Victoria gripped the steering wheel so tightly that her muscles stood out in high relief, breathing undetectably, as if time would simply freeze if she allowed no change in herself.

“They’ll stop as soon as he’s dead, right?” Victoria inquired, taking the turn more sharply than she honestly should in a truck. “His control, his commands or whatever. They’ll go away once we kill him? And that’ll stop the storm too?”

Nathan’s face pinched, but he still replied pretty quickly, “Yeah. I mean, it should. The storm I’m definite about, but, like, he’s never died before, but, I mean, how could he keep controlling them if he’s dead?”

“Rachel’s dead,” Victoria snapped back.

“Yeah, well . . .” Nathan trailed off. Then he slammed his hand on the dashboard - “FUCK! She belongs here, and he doesn’t, so let’s hope he fucking just stays dead, okay? It’s not like my grandpa’s hanging around Arcadia Bay, alright? So let’s fucking get in there, and do this, okay? Fuck, shit, that was the left, um… the next left will do it, then a right, and we’ll pretty much be there.”

Then, it was silence, until they were on the right road, at which point Nathan gestured directly ahead, where a single, fenced-off silhouette of a house sat in the center of a circle of houses, as if atop some symbolic hill. 

“Are you serious?” Victoria asked in a surprisingly normal, bitchy voice. “Just in the middle of everything?”

Nathan shrugged. “It’s some ritual bullshit. Like, literally. Come on, we’ll need to hop over, just pull up to the side. I bet the fucker didn’t even lock the front door.”

As they exited the truck, Nathan asked for the time.

“Why?” Victoria asked.

“I don’t know, who’s the fastest guy on the track team?” Nathan inquired.

Victoria gave him a bit of a weird look as they stood at the fence. “Nate, we don’t have a track team.”

He nodded, visibly relieved, “Oh, good, we might have a chance then. Boost me.”

 

\--

Dana’s eyes darted around, confused, and rapidly turning towards fear. “I, I don’t understand. Julie, Kate. Oh, Kate!” Dana took a step forward, towards the bound Kate on the floor, but immediately the boy and Juliet stepped up to her and grabbed her arms. She was not a fighter, and despite struggling against their grasp, didn’t manage to get herself free. 

“Dana?” Kate asked, scooting forward as well as she could by scooting her knees free. Warren had stepped off to the side to retrieve the duct tape, while the others pushed Dana down to her knees, then onto her face, to bind her wrists.

“Kate? Kate, what’s going on, where are we?” Dana was thrust into this situation so rapidly, and it was clear that whatever influence was over her was dropping rapidly, but still not gone, as so little information seemed to make it to her.

Kate swallowed, wondering how much information she could possibly give her, if there was really any way to explain what was going on. “We’re in Pan Estates and-”    
Immediately, the blonde girl not currently occupied with Dana marched straight at Kate in what felt to her like a charge. As she reached her, she reached down and wrapped her hand around Kate’s mouth, clenching her jaw in her rather small hands, but with enough force that Kate’s cheeks began to bleed. “Listen here you little bitch - I don’t know how your friend got free, but you need to stop talking. Now.” 

The girl’s eyes seemed to almost glaze over as she became quite still, though hardly less forcely on Kate, while Warren concluded his duct taping on Dana’s hands and then stepped over her over to Kate, and tore off a new length of the tape for Kate’s mouth. 

“No! You can’t - we’ll sto,” her words became incoherent as soon as the tape covered her mouth, but it was clear she was trying to scream, and as Warren stood back up, she tried to inch forward again towards Dana, but Warren lifted a foot against her chest and shoved her back against the ground.

Dana became quiet when Kate stopped screaming, when all she did was try and reassert herself sitting up. She tried to lift her eyes up as much as she could to look at Kate, while moving as little as possible. She didn’t understand at first what Kate was doing when she laced her fingers together, considering how strange her posture and hands looked with her wrists and ankles bound. But then, it became clear: Kate was praying.

Dana couldn’t run this time. But even with her face against the cold carpet, maybe she could do that. Maybe she could pray that she’d make it out again.

\--

 

“Ugh,” Victoria grunted as she landed with more force than anticipated, but her stumbling managed to stay upright.    
She and Nathan didn’t hesitate with anymore banter - Nathan just turned to address a whimpering Pompidou and gave his best guess at a command: “Stay. Or, I don’t know, do whateverthefuck you have to to live. Bye.”

Pompidou just started barking in response, which is basically what happened every time that Nathan attempted a form of communication with him. Nathan shrugged, and turned towards the front door.

He had been right - his father either hadn’t thought to lock the door or hadn’t considered it necessary. Still, dying was never really something to stop the stubborn, and they marched right in, finding the interior pitch-black everywhere not bordered by a wide window.

It was a . . . nice house. Not precisely what Victoria had expected, having been at the Prescott manor on many occasions, which was filled with little family photography and a great deal of foreign art, meshed so inconsistently together that you could find a Nigerian mask near a print of the Garden of Earthly Delights, the presence of which might explain Nathan’s fondness for triptychs. But this place - the walls were bare, the only detectable furniture in the dark being an entryway table, and the clear silhouette of a medium-sized dining room off to the right.

A stairway stood immediately in front of them, doubling back on itself to a landing almost directly on top of them. Nathan took only the first step onto it, then turned to look up to the landing. “It doesn’t look like my dad is in his office . . . I guess he’s still inside. Come on, we’ll need to go out back.” Nathan figured there was no harm in turning on a light - everyone knew where they were - and used the light to direct Victoria through the house, until they reached double doors onto a deck. Out the doors, to the left, and they came to another hatch. A much more obvious, clear one, without a lock, like one might find to a cellar. Nathan and Victoria each grabbed a handle on either of the small doors and pulled the heavy doors open, letting it just drop open.

Victoria swallowed slowly, recognizing a very familiar scene - a brightly-lit, white-and-black hallway down to what looked like a heavy vault door. Down they went inside, until there was nothing but them, the vault door, a digicode pad, and an obvious security camera this time, watching them. Victoria looked up into it for a moment, wondering if she would be able to feel something from the other side, Sean’s eyes on her, his fear, his anger. But she felt nothing, and her attention fell back to the digipad. 

“Do you know the code?” she asked needlessly, because Nathan had been staring at it for about the past ten seconds without making any further moves.

“No, but, I mean - my dad’s a pretty simple guy after the weird bits. Give me a minute.”

Victoria peered at the pad for a moment, quickly disappointed to find it did not have the same degree of wear as the one underneath the barn, and thus no indication of what to work with. A red light shown on a row, potentially indicating a finite number of tries they would have. Two, from what it looked like - assuming that last bulb indicated that you could enter, as the one at the barn had.

“Here’s one,” Nathan offered, tapping in a few familiar digits. 

  1. “What do those mean?” Victoria wondered aloud, quickly disappointed by a buzz, the wiping of the digits, and the blinking of the light before it moved one to the right, leaving them with one more attempt.



Nathan’s face pinched as he closed his eyes, simmering in disappointment, frustration, and fear. It radiated off of him, even if his eyes were closed. “December 28, 2013. It was the day, years ago, that I saw Arcadia Bay be destroyed in a storm - the day it would be destroyed. It was supposed to be the start . . . of everything for us. My dad’s legacy. But, I guess not.”

It was the first time that night that Nathan had honestly sounded despondent - not just cynical and humorless, but like he was finally giving up. It did not hurt that suddenly those very feelings flooded into Victoria. To give up. To wait here for the mob to catch them. To let it all be over. But they were not her feelings. They were not her feelings. She would not abandon Max. She would not abandon Kate. She would not abandon everyone she knew to die.

It was a war within herself, but it was not really her she was fighting. She had resolved herself. She could not hesitate until he was dead. “No,” she contested, turning towards her friend, and shoving him rather forcefully against the wall. His eyes blinked open as he caught himself, flinching down the wall a little as Victoria took a step towards him. But she did not raise her hands again. “Look at me, Nathan. Look at me.”

He gritted his teeth at the words. But at the same time, they were familiar. They did not sound like Victoria, but they were Victoria. And his eyes peeled themselves away from the empty hallway to her bright green eyes.

And she saw them as they changed. It was panic and adrenaline and fear that filled them. It was nothing but what had to be done. An indestructible, uncontestable fact. But they started to know why. But she didn’t need to feel his feelings to understand, because he said it himself. “I won’t let them die. I won’t. No more, Tori. We’ll stop him.”

And finally, it was she who had to drop her eyes. But Nathan took a step forward, and wrapped his arms around Victoria, and, surprisingly, hers around him. “Okay,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Thank you.”

 

There was no more time. Their hug was brief, and Nathan cleared his throat as he turned back towards the digicode pad.

And then just sat there with a blank expression for a good thirty seconds.

“Shit,” he proclaimed.

And then he tried another set of new numbers. 0705.

The light turned green.

“Fuck,” he replied, despite his success. The numbers disappeared after a second, but Nathan lifted his fingers to the screen for just a second longer.

“What is it, Nate?” Victoria asked, as sympathetically as she could manage while drawing a switchblade from her pocket.

“My mom,” he confessed, and turned his attention away from the pad, grabbing to handle of the bunker door. 

Victoria was silent further, as the two pushed the door open. It would have to wait.

 

\--

Sean seemed to prefer Warren’s body in particular, as the other classmates were all standing pretty still at this point. Warren, however, kept pacing back and forth in front of Kate, clearly frustrated, eyes darting to Kate every few seconds.

“I just don’t understand - how, how could this happen? It was supposed to be Caulfield! Why, why has it chosen you?” It finally occurred to him that he might be on the right track, and finally turned towards Kate completely, crouching down beside her. “Do you even know who you are? What you are? Do you know what you have ruined here?”

Kate remained silent underneath the tape, her fingers still laced together in her lap. He knew she couldn’t answer, but only became increasingly agitated in the silence. Warren stood again, and strode over to Max’s unconscious body, dragging her in the space directly in front of Kate. He reached towards the blonde’s face, but she flinched away, only causing him to step over Max and grab her by the hair. “Stop moving,” he commanded, and ripped the tape away from her mouth. She still remained silent, which suited him just fine so far. “Now, tell me what you know - what my son knows - about Arcadia Bay, about what you are. Tell me now, or I’ll squeeze the life from your nosy friend, like Jefferson should have done long ago.”

“Warren,” Dana spoke up in a pleading voice, “why are you doing this? Max and Kate, they’re your friends. I don’t-” but Juliet placed a foot on her back and pushed, making it difficult for Dana to continue.

Kate looked up at Warren, and tried to command, “Stop,” but it came out raspy and weak. “Don’t hurt her, please. I’ll tell you, I promise.” 

It may have been unclear who she was referring to, but Juliet’s foot came off of Dana’s back, slowly. Juliet began to look at her foot, even after it was off of Dana, her gaze the only one not immediately turning towards Kate, though she followed suit soon afterwards.

Kate swallowed once, then twice, trying to think of what she really, honestly knew. And, as far as she understood, Sean could not focus on what she was talking about and effectively controlling everyone else, so she may as well do her best to have any hope of distracting him. 

“My name is Kate Marsh. Two weeks ago, your son drugged me and attempted to kidnap me from a Vortex Club party, to take me to an underground bunker in the woods and photograph me. He didn’t. Max and Victoria, they saved me. Then, sometime this week, Max started to see things. Things that weren’t real. She saw Arcadia Bay, destroyed by a storm, in just a few hours. Friday morning. She, along with me and Victoria, were chosen to protect Arcadia Bay, to stop the thing that was hurting it. To stop you. Just like Rachel Amber was.”

Warren was almost soft-spoken now, crouching down to look Kate in the eye. “Yes . . . Rachel Amber. I thought this was all over when I put her away. I don’t know how you can even exist - there was no one to choose you; no one, at least, until my son let her go last night.”

Warren didn’t seem to notice, but Juliet had taken a step back away from Dana, and her eyes slowly shifted around between the people who surrounded her. Kate, though - her eyes flicked away just for a moment towards Juliet, before her focus returned to Warren.

“It was Arcadia Bay. It’s . . .  _ dying _ . Victoria says she can feel it - feel the whales and the birds and everything dying. It needed someone, anyone, I guess. I don’t know why we were chosen. But I know you’re not going to hurt anyone else, Sean Prescott. Rachel Amber was your last victim.” Kate had no idea how she could possibly believe that. It was so hard to believe that they hadn’t failed, down in this basement, bound just like that dead girl. But she wasn’t dead. And she believed it. She knew it. Victoria would not fail. Nathan would not fail. No one else had to die - except for Sean.

A smile crossed Warren’s face, the first in the whole conversation. It was so different, so much more smug, so much more cheerless than he really was. He began to rise to his feet once again, “Oh, I’m not so sure about that, Ms. Mar…” he stumbled a little as he stood, as if his legs would not properly support him. “Wha?” he issued, clearly confused, then trying again, more successfully to stand erect. He began to look at his hands.

“How did you? How . . . oh . . . 

“He’s here.”

And then, in a very different voice, suddenly filled with panic, he exclaimed, “Kate!?”

 

* * *

 

Victoria was not sure what she was expecting inside the room, but it certainly was not what she got. The room was small, nothing like the bunker from before. It was nearly a cube, with each floor and the ceiling a black material that looked a great deal like marble but without the sheen.  The black material was cut into wide geometric lines that sunk further into the walls and ceiling, as if it were some great multi-angular labyrinth for a rat. The only light in the room was a long trail of candles that looked as if they had been burning for a great time, as wax, melted or dried, formed pools and hills around them. Even if they were widely spaced, Victoria clearly recognized the formation they were arranged in - a spiral, with a man in the center. And, unsurprisingly, the man in the center of this circle was exactly the man they were looking for: Sean Prescott, having clearly been dressed in a suit but having pulled off the suit and tie, with his legs crossed, sitting on what looked like a mat on the hard floor.

There he was, defenseless and unmoving, and yet Victoria made no movement towards him. She had no idea how to do this part, seeing him again. The plain-looking, middle aged man, sitting in his vortex of low flame. Mr. Prescott. Nathan’s dad. She looked down at the switchblade, but didn’t even click it out of its handle.

“What is he . . . doing?” She asked.

Nathan took a step inside, but he did not move past the implied barrier of the spiral. He just watched, for a moment at least. Then he swallowed, and tried to explain, “He’s not here. He’s in the other place. The place Rachel was. And Max. This is his dark room.” His eyes slowly slipped away from his father, noticing a case lying open directly in front of his father. The illumination was poor, but he could see the glint of glass from an old syringe sitting, empty, next to his father, where his sleeve had been rolled up to the elbow. Within the case, Nathan thought he saw at least three more syringes, but they were filled with some dark substance.

Nathan started again, as Victoria made her way to his side. “He, ah . . . he comes here to use his powers. That’s all I know. He said he’d bring me here, one day, when it was time.” He was quiet again for a moment, and Victoria could feel something . . . off. A new hesitation. And she waited for him to continue, as he did: “I’ve. I’ve ah, been here before. Or, someplace a lot like this. When I saw Arcadia Bay being destroyed, this is where it happened. I remember . . .” Nathan finally took a step over a row of the spiral, careful to keep the flame from his pants, then another row, until they became too narrow for him to stand, and he was only a few feet from his father. He kept his eyes on the case, on the syringes inside. Victoria did not follow.

“He, uh. Fuck. I remember these. I remember he brought me, and he injected me with something. With one of these. And then I saw the bay wiped out. I saw hundreds of posters, posters of Rachel, I saw them in the storm. I saw it more clearly than anything I’ve ever seen, like . . . like HD for my brain.” Nathan took a huge step, so that he had one foot inside the circle that his father sat in, but his eyes were not on his father at all, but on the syringes. He reached forward with impressive flexibility, and drew his fingers over the glass for a moment.

His quietness sounded like reverence: “I think this is it. I think this is how he made me. What makes us  _ us _ . I think this is it.” He finally let his fingers curl, and he drew one of the syringes from the case, holding it up near his face, still straddling the spiral of candles.

“We’re here,” Victoria answered, just as quietly, not used to this strange hush from her friend. “Why don’t we just kill him? No fight. It can be over.”

But Nathan just shook his head, though he finally withdrew his step, and carefully exited the spiral of candles. “No, no, he’s not there. That’s not him. Just like Rachel - we put her body in the ground but we didn’t kill her, no. But I can still kill him. We can still do this.”

He finally drew his attention away from the syringe, and looked up towards the other source of light streaming in from the hallway. “Close the door. He’s going to have a tough time controlling everyone if I’m in there killing him an’ shit.”

Victoria’s lips pursed into a line, “What do you mean, in there? And - and Nate, look, there’s a password to get out of here, too. We could get locked in.”

Nathan was peeling his jacket off at this time, though, and working on rolling up his sleeve while keeping the syringe in his palm. “Either I’ll figure it out, or a fucking hurricane is going to decimate the world outside. I need time either way - I think. I think if I inject myself with this, I’ll be able to get to wherever my dad is. If Rachel, and Max, and my dad can all go there, it isn’t special to his power - it’s a place I can reach, and, if I understand correctly, it’s a place where a bullet still kills you. Otherwise I guess I’ll trip out on some freaky shit for a while and everyone dies - in which case, go ahead and stab my dad, fuck.”

Victoria shook her head, “Nathan, even if that works, I can’t just let you-”

“Please,” Nathan shot forcefully, if still not loudly. “Please, just give me this chance to set things right. It’s the only hope we’ve got. For the town, for Kate, for Max. Come on, please.”

Victoria was still, watching her best friend for a moment.

She turned, and pushed the vault door closed, with a surprisingly tame ‘click’ after her.

Nathan sat down on the floor, and tried to mimic the folded-leg posture of his father. He held up the syringe, with a brief, “Here.”

Victoria returned to Nathan’s side, crouched down, and retrieved it from his hands, pulling his sleeve up further so she could try and get a look at the veins above his elbow in the shitty candlelight. She ended up having to feel along his arm a little, but it helped that his veins were in such high relief.

“Okay, Nate.”

“Okay.”

“I love you - you fucker.”

“Yeah, yeah, I love you too.”

 

Victoria slid the needle in uncomfortably slowly, but this had never really been her area of drug expertise.

“Save them, please.”

“I will.”


	8. Unravel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Nathan make their way through living nightmares as they seek Sean. Max encounters her other self from the diner, and the two make their way through the elaborate phantom maze. After the world is ruptured yet again, Nathan finds himself standing face to face with his father.

Nathan could not remember what he had just been doing, exactly. He remembered wandering down into the bunker, he remembered sitting down. But here he was, sitting on the couch of the photo studio, flipping gems around in bejeweled while he waited for something. What was he waiting for? He wasn’t sure, but it must be taking quite a while, because he was on Zen mode, which was generally just for relaxing. He must be relaxing, then.

He got the itch that he should be doing something. Not just Bejeweled - he must be here in the studio for a reason. His eyes flicked up from his phone, and settled on the set of cameras arranged around the main photography wall in an arc. Someone was sitting up against the wall. He locked his phone and stood up, trying to get a better look at them. Blonde hair. Wrists bound. They looked pretty out of it.

He took a step forward, and it all came into view just as he remembered what happened. It was like he could only just hear it now, the music playing in the background, the jazz. But it must have been playing the whole time.

“Victoria?” he asked, as if he wasn’t perfectly sure who was here with him.  
Her head lolled to the side, almost looking directly at him, but unable to focus her eyes. “Nathan . . .?” she mumbled slowly.

“Oh god,” he issued, sidestepping the cameras to crouch next to her, bathed in the brightness beyond the camera lenses. She wore her yellow button up without a sweater. Jefferson must have not wanted it for the photos. But she was always so cold. Nathan pulled of his jacket, and tried to pull it around her, but she was just so unresponsive. “Here, Tori, come on, are you okay?”

Her eyes weren’t even coming to his now, they just sort of lay transfixed on the ground. Her voice was even quieter this time: “Help me.”  
Nathan nodded. “Yeah, I will. I’m gonna get you out of here Tori, I pro-”

“Now now, Nathan,” came the voice, just as the jazz cut out. “We can’t have that. I think it’s time miss Chase has another dose, don’t you?”  
Nathan froze as it spoke. He breathed deeply, slowly rising to his feet, shaking, knowing he would have to fight, and it would show on his face as soon as he turned.

 

But when he did turn, he was surprised to find a hand immediately on the inside of his shoulder, pushing him up against the wall. Heavy music thrummed all around him, and before he had an opportunity to fight off his attacker, he found soft, messy lips up against his, and he was still. He wouldn’t have even recognized her so close if she weren’t so small.

That helped him push her off for a moment, at least. “Kate!” he practically had to yell over the sound, “What’re you doing?”

Her face was beaded with sweat, and her hair was down, both unfamiliar sights to him. Her lipstick was smeared up her top lip, and her eyes still weren’t quite focusing on him.

She seemed put out by his rejection. And yet, after a moment of contemplation, she seemed to have a surprisingly thoughtful answer, “I just, you know, wanna know. Like, if I could like you guys. I don’t feel it with them. So I’m trying with you. You’re really pretty, Nathan.”  
Kate brought her warm, warm hands back up to Nathan’s face, and lurched forward again, but Nathan was frozen for a few seconds again while she kissed him, knowing this could be good for their plan - and yet it felt all so wrong.  
He pushed her away again, but this time he had something more to say, as he raised his arms to clasp to the side of her shoulders, distancing her and weakening her. “Look, Kate, you don’t look so good. Let’s get you outside, okay?”

 

She looked extremely confused. “But I - I feel . . . I feel fine.”  
Nathan shook his head. “No, no, Kate, I don’t think you should be here. I just need to make a call, okay? Then I’ll walk you back to your room.”  
This just seemed to upset her further: “Is this because you don’t, you don’t want to kiss me?”  
Nathan shook his head. He didn’t know why he was - maybe he just didn’t want to get rebuked. “No, no, I promise - just, stay there, let me make a call, I’ll be right back, okay?”

She didn’t say anything in response, but he turned towards the exit and walked off immediately, shouldering his way past everyone until he pushed his way through the pool door.

 

His camera was in his hands. He didn’t remember having his camera with him. Why did he have his camera?

Dana was more conscious than she should be. Her eyes kept shifting back and forth slowly, and she kept her body so tense, with her arms out in front of her but her legs pulled over her stomach, like armor.

God, something about that pose just felt right. He raised the camera over his eye, trying to cancel out all of the small details except for her. Her eyes, her mouth, her body, the shadows of her hands. _Click_.

Good. But you always needed a closeup. Jefferson loved those. He probably wouldn’t even look without that shot of the eyes, open and afraid and unknowing. Nathan dropped to his knees and leaned forward, bringing the camera about a foot away from Dana’s pale, staring face. _Click._

 

But her eyes were closed, just like she was sleeping. But Nathan, half-laying on her like he was, knew better: Rachel was dead, and she had been dead for hours. He knew that, even as he denied it: “Oh my god, Rachel? Rachel, Rachel, wake up, okay? Wake up.”

And there was the clicking of a tongue somewhere behind Nathan, followed by the sharp sound of annoyance: “And now look what you’ve done, Nathan. You fucked up. You killed Rachel, and put us all in danger.”

Nathan half-crawled his way off of Rachel, but his legs felt so weak, he didn’t know if he could stand. He barely managed to pull himself up into a seated position , his arms wrapped around his knees, as he looked up at Jefferson, his sleeves rolled up and eyes almost flat lines. “But I . . . I didn’t. I didn’t kill her, I-”  
“Shut up! Shut up you shit! She woke up - whatever you gave her at first wasn’t enough, and you dosed her again. You killed her, Nathan.”

Nathan knew that he didn’t. At least, he was pretty sure he didn’t. But everything in his mind felt heavy, and his body felt gross, like it was covered in dried sweat. He couldn’t remember. Not killing her, not taking her. All he remembered was ‘fuck you’. All he remembered was her anger. “But I . . . I didn’t kill her! I - I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.”  
Jefferson’s hands flew out wide, like a cat trying to look big, and Nathan shrinked up against himself, face down as he began to yell: “Well now, THAT JUST FIXES EVERYTHING! Except it doesn’t, Nathan. You’ve got a lot more to forget now, because this just doesn’t go away. Not yet.”  
Jefferson grasped a short-shafted shovel stuck in the ground beside him, and threw it down at Nathan’s feet.

Nathan just looked at it, frozen in place. “Make it go away, Nathan.”

 

Nathan’s head pulled up slowly from the wheel, and everything inside of him felt like it was cracked, just on the edge of broken, letting in so much more white light than normal. Bright and blurred. God, it all just hurt so much. Where was he?

He looked out the front window of the car, and finally recognized part of the puzzle: the front end of the SUV was partially crushed, especially the driver’s side, which looked like it had smashed into something from an angle. But what had he hit?

His arms still seemed to work fine. He reached into his pocket, and after several seconds of confusion, managed to dial 9-1-1.

 _Nathan_ : “I’ve . . . been in an accident.”

 _Nathan_ : “I think I hit another car, but I don’t see it.”

 _Nathan_ : “I’m . . . in the backroads, outside of Arcadia Bay, near the freeway to Tillamook.”

 _Nathan_ : “I don’t know the road.”

 _Nathan_ : “Nathan Prescott.”

 _Nathan_ : “About twenty minutes? I think?”

 _Nathan_ : “I hit my head, but I think I’m okay.”

 _Nathan_ : “I don’t see them.”

The operator said something more, but a sudden wave of nausea struck Nathan, and he unbuckled his seatbelt, opened the door, and ducked out just enough to vomit out onto the road. His attention almost immediately wavered from his call, and he half stepped, half fell from the car, stumbling away from the vehicle until he reached the edge of the road. Beyond it, off the raised gravel, a red truck lay on its side. The windows had been shattered, but it must have shattered away from the truck for the most part, because there was no notable amount around it. Nathan couldn’t see who was inside, but nobody was getting out, either.

He remembered his phone, now.

 _Nathan:_ “Hey, are you still there?”

 _Nathan:_ “Yeah, I hit a truck.”

 _Nathan:_ “Nobody’s moving inside.”

 

\--

 

The corridors had begun to lose their effect on Max. When she had first appeared in this place, surrounded by pictures of herself, of Kate, of Rachel, of Victoria, and so many more girls she didn’t know in twisting hallways, she had been afraid. But she became aware, just as Jefferson began to call out for her, that what she was seeing was incomplete. It was like it was just beyond her vision, but she knew that some of the walls blocking her in were not really there at all, that there was no roof above her - just the pacing of Jefferson’s boots and the slashes of light coming from in front of him as he paced about. It was incomplete. It was not real at all.

That didn’t mean she wanted to get caught. A few steps at a time, she moved through the maze of pictures and white-washed walls, seeing her own blank expression staring back at her. Nothing so cheap would stop her now.

She turned a corner in the hallway and felt a breeze touch her skin, no longer suffocating on the inside of the maze. The exit must be close, so close now. One of Jefferson’s flashlights was behind her, just glancing past the corner she’d turned, and another peered inside the end of the hallway she was in, on the left, illuminating a portrait of Victoria, hands bound, eyes wide open, staring straight at Max.

Max swallowed, trying to hold down the feeling of bile. But she stayed calm, waiting for the light to turn away again, so she could advance across the hallway.  
That’s when she heard it.   
“Max . . .” came the voice softly, from across the hallway. “Oh god . . . where are we? What’s happening?”

The light disappeared, but Max remained frozen. She had heard that. She had heard that for real. Had she?

She finally realized the light was gone, and crept down the hallway, lined with black and white photographs of Rachel at some junkyard, clearly drugged or . . . dead. Max ignored them. She just had to get closer to the portrait.  
She pressed herself against the wall as she approached the corner closest to the portrait, and listened as Jefferson’s boots drew closer and closer, and yet she had already learned that he wouldn’t turn the corner. He would just shine the light, and it would glance over the walls and photo-

“I don’t want to die like this! I’m only eighteen . . .” Her voice was so close, like it was just behind the pane of glass that separated her from the black and white girl staring at her.

 

The light turned away, and Max could hear Jefferson swivel around. She took a step out from the corner to tail him out, when she heard a sudden exclamation -  
“Aha! I see you, Max.”  
She froze like a deer, but there were no headlights. The light was not shining on her. Jefferson wasn’t looking at her at all.

 

The walls were no more. Jefferson’s light shone on a concrete sidewalk around which was nothing, nothing at all. But sitting on that sidewalk, lying on the ground and struggling to stand up, was Max Caulfield - the one in brown, with the moth pattern on her shirt. The girl from the other side.

“Why?” That girl cried, as Jefferson began to stride calmly towards her. “Why are you doing this? To me? To Victoria? To Chloe?”

Max had not seen one on any of the other Jeffersons, but this one held a silver gun in his hand as he walked forward, crouching down next to Max when she discovered she could not escape any further but for the edge that plunged down into nothingness.

“Why?” He asked. “Could an artist such as myself ever waste such beauty? Could I deny myself, the world, the opportunity to watch as you became co-”

 

The Max on the ground’s eyes slid away from Jefferson just in time to alert him that something was behind him. As he spun around, though, he favored his flashlight over the gun, and it cost him dearly. Max’s hands pressed against his chest, and his hands were only able to claw out for the edge when he was much, much too far away, and he plunged down into the darkness.

Max peered over the edge, and she saw nothing below. “Die, you motherfucker,” she growled, continuing to watch the darkness before she remembered the Max on the ground beside her.

She offered down her hand.

 

“You . . . you died,” the Max in brown whispered, though there was no more Jefferson to overhear them.

Max shook her head in response. “No. I’m alive. You’re alive. Let’s stay that way.”

There was only a brief moment of silence, and then the Max’s hands were linked, and both standing. Their hands did not leave one another even then, as they looked down the sidewalk, that seemed to lead to the center of the Blackwell campus.

“I’ve been running ever since you and Rachel disappeared. I thought I was dead. Maybe I am dead.”

Max shook her head again, and began to pull her other self down the sidewalk. “No, you’re not dead. But we’re not running anymore. It’s time to fight back.”

 

* * *

 

Rachel could not stop putting the photos up. The room would be covered on every wall soon if she did not stop, but for some reason, the more she taped to the wall, the more important it became to her that there be more.  
She paced back and forth in her hideout with Chloe, in the junkyard, from a little box filled with photos of herself that never seemed to end as she grabbed small handfuls and taped them in neat rows down every wall. Her and Nathan. Her and Chloe. Her and Frank. Her dressed in suits, dressed in dresses, dressed in tank tops and snapbacks, her at Skills USA and her at a Metric concert. She was all over the place, never tethered for long, but with so many repeating elements: always with someone, always away from home, always smiling. She had spent so much time in this room putting these photos up, she did not understand why the walls were not covered yet.

 

There was something behind her. She knew that, but she could not bring herself to look at it yet. Not until she was done putting up the photos, not until she understood what they all added up to. She had to finish before she looked. She had to finish before anyone could come inside and see.

She never heard footsteps outside, but a voice appeared at her side, and she jumped.  
“Rachel? Is that you? You’re okay, too?”

There were two people standing in the doorway, one dressed in brown and the other with a shirt so bloodstained it was hard to tell what color it was supposed to be. The two didn’t look familiar to her. “Uh, yeah, I’m okay. Who are you?” It didn’t immediately register to her that the two were perfectly identical, although it unnerved her a little when it finally did. _Twins, I guess_. Twins having a really rough day. Rachel turned a little to look at them better, but still stayed facing the wall.

The one in brown raised her hand to her chest and stepped forward, but the other one seemed frozen at the doorway, staring somewhere behind Rachel. “Rachel, it’s me,” she said, “Max. We just met in the diner, but you vanished. How did you get here?”

Rachel blinked, considering the question. “I . . . well, I don’t know. But I think I’ve been here a while, so I don’t think it really matters. I’ve got so much to do, and so little time.” Her frustration with the question lasted only a moment, but she realized she still had pictures in her hands, and added the little loops of tape on the back of them to be pasted up on the wall.

“Don’t you . . . remember?” Max asked, taken aback.

Rachel faked a thoughtful face, as if deeply considering the question, while she tried to get some work done. It seemed to work, because Max didn’t say anything immediately.

At least, not that Max. Her twin behind her, after a pause, raised a hand and pointed in the middle of the room. “Rachel, what is that?”  
“Hmm?” Rachel asked, hurriedly making her way back to the box to grab a new handful of photos and make more loops of tape. “What’s what?”  
“Rachel, turn around and look,” the twin insisted.

Irritation quickly broke out onto Rachel’s surface, “Look, I’m trying to get some work done here, don’t you mind-”  
“Rachel, who is that!?” The twin was practically yelling now, and it made Rachel pause. She was only looking at her out of the corner of her eye, but the indication to look somewhere else in the room, of the insistence . . .

“I . . .” Rachel said, and turned a little more to look at Max in the eye. She seemed just as confused as Rachel, swiveling around to look at Rachel and Max, then Rachel and Max. She, too, kept her posture facing towards the wall of photos. Why? Why were they so afraid to look?  
Despite all simplicity, Rachel hesitated significantly in turning around. She breathed in, and out, and in, and out . . . and then turned to face the center of the room. The photos in her hand plummeted into a disorganized pile.

The thing barely looked human, but it unmistakably was. It wore a black tank top, with straight, dull brown hair hanging like a curtain around its face. The top of its spine was visible above the shirt in a break of its hair, the bones protruding jaggedly from the pale flesh, revealing the same emaciation apparent in the thing’s frail arms. It sat on its crossed legs, facing away from Rachel and the photo wall just as she had been facing away from it, unmoving, not even clearly breathing, like a corpse that had managed to sit itself upright unsupported.

“I . . . how did I not see that? How long has it been there?”  
Max’s twin in the bloodstained shirt stepped past Max and straight into the center of the room, as Max suddenly seemed paralyzed, unspeaking, unmoving as she watched the other two. She couldn’t get a clear look of whatever the thing was, so she moved around the junk/coffee table in the center of the room and moved to the couch to get a closer look.

“I have to get out of here,” Rachel practically whimpered, looking around her for a source of escape. “I can’t . . . I can’t stay here. I have to go.” She moved quickly, pushing right past the static Max and out the door.

Max raised a hand slowly in response, but did not turn as Rachel fled. “Rachel, no! Wait, please!” She either did not hear, or she did not care to listen.

The other Max, after studying the thing’s face for a moment, stood back up, noticing no response from it.

“We’ve got to go after her before she gets caught up in the maze here; we can’t let her become that.” She hurried for the door, but the other Max did not make to follow her, or even turn.

“Max, please!  Don’t!”

Max turned back around at the door, tilting her head to the side in confusion that the Max in brown was not following after her. “Max,” she said, “We’ve got to go before we lose her.”

She could hear that the other Max was crying. “Max . . . Max, I can’t move. I’m so scared - why can’t I move?”

But that was not all that was wrong. Max’s body was beginning to disappear. The colors of her clothes and body all began to look washed-out, and then translucent. Max stepped back towards her, and placed a hand on her shoulder, only finding that the sensation was all wrong - like she was there at some places, and not at others. “Max?” she asked - “What’s happening? Why are you _fading_?”

It was clear Max was struggling against something, but some force was preventing her from moving. “Max? Rachel? I think . . . I think I’m tied up. Where did you go? Please don’t leave me. Don’t leave me here with her.”  
“I’m not going to leave you. Just hold on, I’m going to get you out of whate-” but then, she vanished, and Max’s hand just fell through the air, leaving her all alone with the monster with vacant eyes.

Her hand fell to her side, and she allowed her eyes to drift back over to the creature in the center of the room. “I’m sorry,” she uttered. She turned to pursue Rachel.

 

* * *

 

Nathan inched back away from the truck off the side of the road. This could not be happening again. He couldn’t have broken her again.  
He tripped as his feet found no ground behind them, and plunged downward until he struck soft ground. His vision was cut into a rectangle, submerged just a few feet deep in the damp earth of a shallow grave. There he lay still for a moment, breathing quietly, as if hiding from whatever was outside.

But they found him. The three of them came bearing shovels, surrounding his grave on every side - Victoria, Rachel, and Max. Their mouths did not move as they began to shovel the dirt onto his paralyzed body, but still he could hear them, as if their lips were right up against his ears.

“You did this to me.”  
“You hurt me.”  
“You betrayed me.”  
“You deserve this.”  
“Everything will be okay once you’re dead.”

 

Nathan almost didn’t recognize it when the dirt stopped pelting him in the face, and it was instead replaced with a heavy deluge of cold water. He just kept his eyes closed and tried to make it all go away. But the cold was there, on the edge of his nerves, and he could not fight it for long.   
When the crack of thunder blew past him, he opened his eyes, and found himself standing before the coastal lighthouse of Arcadia Bay.

There it was: massive, inevitable, unyielding to the years he’d spent wishing it would never come. The storm, that rough beast that had come to devour them all. No matter how many times Nathan saw it, it never changed - the date may change, but the city was destroyed all the same. It always ended with the newspaper.

Nathan shuffled through the cold rain, almost relieved to find himself in such a reliable nightmare, one with a solution that he could face. There was almost no light, but the structure of the lighthouse was all he needed to guide himself down the peninsula to where he must go.

A light flashed in front of him, but it was no flash of lightning this time. No, instead it was a beam coming through the rain, slashing past Nathan for the briefest moment, highlighting a figure that stood in front of the railing that held the fluttering newspaper.  
Nathan froze as it all came back to him. Where he was, why he was here. His father.

His father turned around, as if the light somehow reminded him that Nathan was there. He just sat there, with his hands in his pockets, slightly hunched over, exhausted, while the two stared at each other. The light from the other side of the bay flashed again just a few seconds later.

Then his father finally spoke, “She ruined everything.”  
Nathan did not know what to make of the defeat in his voice, not after everything that had just happened. But his nightmares remained with him, and they came quickly to the surface: “No, _you_ ruined everything. You did this.”

Sean just shook his head, and peered over his shoulder at the storm. It looked like it had only just formed, and it moved so slowly. His eyes returned to his son. “I did everything I could. I was so close to making our name matter. To making this town matter.” He exhaled slowly, but as he breathed back in, he seemed to shudder with fresh anger, “But that - stupid - _cunt_ \- she . . . she ruined everything. Any hope this town had.”

The same flash in the distance. It was much too regular, and occasionally it would intersect with the light of the lighthouse and create a pocket of light in the dark rain. “We did that. She had no clue what we were doing until we killed her. Rachel could have lived, just like everyone else, if-”  
“Not her,” Sean almost growled, as if the name snapped him into awareness. “Rachel Amber never meant anything. Caulfield. She’s torn the world apart, and she’s changed everything. This was never supposed to happen. There was no need for anyone to die.”

Nathan took a step forward and began to shout, “What about Rachel, huh?! What about Kate and Victoria? What were you going to do with Max when you got her? What about when you rammed that truck into us? Would that make you matter? Would that Prescotts matter over our corpses? Is all of that Max’s fault? Is that Max’s fault!?” Nathan’s finger darted out towards the storm again as he kept advancing towards his father, until they were just a few feet apart.  
Sean met Nathan’s menace with flat eyes. “More than you know, Nathan. When these people die this morning, their bodies will bury her.”

Nathan took the last step between him and his father as he jerked the gun out of his pocket, swinging it close to his father’s temple, who immediately took a step back and began to cower. “You sick fuck! Take responsibility for what you did! To Victoria! To Rachel! To this town! To me! This is all your fault, say it!” As Nathan shouted, he only advanced more, until his father had fallen over on the muddy ground and Nathan stood above him, the gun loosely trained on the man’s head.  
Nathan was clearly expecting an answer, though he wouldn’t stop shouting, so his father began to shout in response, “I did nothing except try to make this family mean something to the world - to make you mean something! I protected you. I never hurt _anyone_ I didn’t have to for the good of us all. The only thing I am responsible for is creating a failure.”

This almost seemed to calm Nathan down. His change was so eerily swift, that his father’s face immediately softened in response. The man in the mud spoke again, as softly as he could over the pour of the rain, “Nathan. We don’t have to do this. We can still-”  
The gun made a soft click as Nathan pulled down the hammer, and his father audibly inhaled with fear.

“You’re right, Dad. I’ve always been a failure. I fucked up until the very end. I protected you when Victoria and Max figured it out. But I’m going to set it right, Dad. I’m going to do right, just this once.”

 

Nathan breathed out, steeling himself, while his father was finally silent. There was shouting in the distance, but he couldn’t quite make it out. It sounded an awful lot like . . .

“Nathan!” Rachel cried.

“Nathan! Nothing here is real! That’s not your-”

_Bang!_

Nathan’s body was cold all over from the rain, but the chill that swept through his body came from within, not without. He could not feel the bullet, not yet, but the chill sapped his strength, and he dropped to his knees before falling over onto his side, free hand fumbling at the wound in his abdomen.

* * *

 

Max felt everything slow as she watched Nathan fall after the gunshot. Sean had been so fast, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the handgun, how could he have even had time to think? Sean began to push himself up, and Rachel’s shriek was piercing in her ears: “NO!”  
It was never Max’s first instinct to speak. Instead, she reached her hand out as if she could pull them apart from each other, as if she could stop it all. She had to save Nathan. They had to do this. They had to win.

And then, everything when from slow to still. Nathan lay in a fetal position, his gun fallen from his hand, while his father rose next to him. Rachel had somehow pushed past Max, her golden hair whipping about in the rain and wind like a streak of fire underneath the light of a distant lighthouse. And Max’s hand clutched the air as the rain stood still.  
Everything snapped back in a flash, such small changes. Nathan stood over his father, gun aimed steadily at his throat about a foot away. She and Rachel were yelling at the top of their lungs, trying to warn Nathan of what they thought was a phantom. They were still too far, and he could not hear them.

Max suddenly diverged in her sprint, wrapping a hand around Rachel’s mouth and stuttering her to a halt. Rachel screamed against her hand and struggled for a moment, elbowing Max rather severely in the gut. But it was enough.

_Bang!_

Sean’s head fell back as his body collapsed against the ground, and the shot was nearly muted by the pour of rain.

“It’s real!” Max shouted too close to Rachel’s ear, trying to get her to stop struggling. “We did it. It’s over.”

Nathan dropped the gun, and stood upright, clearly panting as he thought himself alone. After a brief moment, he looked around for the source of shouting that he had heard, and found Rachel standing there in the rain, with Max Caulfield’s arm now wrapped over her chest, holding her back but not keeping her silent. He said something, then, but they could not hear it.

A bolt of lightning struck the lighthouse with a profound crack, and Max was left all but blind and deaf. All she heard was another shout that sounded something like: ‘no!’

* * *

 

Max could hear crying. Quite a lot of crying, in fact. And that was not all.

“Hey, hey there Max, are you all right?”

The voice was familiar, but not one that she expected, not one that she actively recognized. It took her a moment to realize that she was not still blind, but that she had not opened her eyes; when she finally did, she found herself looking up into the earnest and concerned face of the officer who had interviewed her the night of Nathan’s assault. Officer Berry.

“Max? Oh, Max, are you awake? Are you okay?” Kate’s voice was accompanied by a few steps, and another voice from further away asking ‘Max?’, but Officer Berry was quick to respond, standing up and turning away from Max.

“Hey now, hey now, I need you all to keep a few steps back until I figure out whatha hell is going on around here.”

Max was not sure where she was. There was only a single light in the room, and there didn’t seem to be any color to anything. She felt a wave of nausea as details failed to come into focus, but as she turned on her side to vomit, she found her stomach empty, and nothing but the sting of acid in response.

Officer Berry returned to Max’s side as she rolled onto her back, careful to keep his eye elsewhere in the room but still stay close. “Now, Max, we’ve got an ambulance coming to get you, but I need to know something. Your classmates - did they attack you? Have you seen Mr. Prescott or Nathan here tonight?”

Strange as it might be, Max could recognize some of the crying. Dana and Juliet were cryers, and they were both in the room right now, she was sure of it. And out of the corner of her eye, she could see Kate a few paces away, and she was crying too. But Kate was all right. She was safe. She looked like shit, but she probably looked a lot better than Max did.

“Nathan!” She sputtered after a moment. Kate’s attention almost immediately focused, while everyone else seemed to notice nothing special about this.

Officer Berry followed up gently, “Yes, Nathan Prescott. You’ve seen him?”

Max shook her head as well as she could, “No, no, I haven’t. And nobody attacked me, I just-”

Officer Berry sighed, but it was strong enough to get Max’s weak words to end as he looked away from her. “Now, why don’t you get to the hospital before you start trying to spin me a story. They’ll be here soon, I promise.”

“Max,” Warren’s voice came from somewhere she could not see in the room. “Max, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

Max did. They killed Sean Prescott, and now they had to clean up his mess.


	9. Polarized

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Officer Berry tries to debrief Victoria and Nathan to little avail, having discovered far more than they realized. Max visits Chloe in the hospital before she is told there is someone she may want to meet . . .  
> Max is offered a choice.

Victoria was not sure what she expected would happen to end this whole ordeal. She’d kept ahold of the switchblade and sat crouched behind Sean, just in case everything went horribly sideways and she had to turn this place into a scene from a Dexter season finale to keep her town from getting annihilated. It wasn’t exactly a thought she craved, but if Sean killed his son, or Max, or Kate, or even Rachel (again), it might be the only way things turned out. She’d go to prison to save everyone. Funny, that was never how the super hero stories went.

She was entirely sure that she was not expecting blood to suddenly spurt from Sean’s throat though, as he toppled over from his meditative stance over onto his candles. As such, she screamed. A lot. She didn’t even notice that Nathan’s eyes shot open a few seconds later, although when he dropped from his seated posture to lying down, exhausted, she at least knew what to do with her panic.

She edged along the wall around the ring of candles and made her way back to Nathan, who was panting from some effort, offering no evidence that he noticed the man bleeding out in the center of the room.

“Nathan, are you okay?” Victoria crouched down beside him, placing her hand over where she had injected him with the creepy shit. He was shivering, although the candles left the place kind of warm.

“I’m alive,” he replied quietly. “And if he is, he won’t be for much longer.”

Victoria turned her head slightly, and nodded in agreement with his assessment. Then she shifted her attention back - “But, are you hurt? Do you know if Max and Kate are-”

“No,” Nathan grunted, as he pushed himself upright. He began to fish into his jacket, looking for a smoke, and being reminded that he had used the last one back at Frank’s trailer. “Ah, shit,” he whined, and leaned up against the uncomfortably-shaped wall.

Victoria produced one, slumping down next to Nathan, in no power to actually get out of the room until he chose to. He looked at her expectantly for a light, but she just shrugged her shoulders, not having prepared quite that well.

“You could . . .” she began, but cut short, thinking of the morbidity.

“Nah, you’re right, that’s fuckin’ awesome,” Nathan followed up quickly, and leaned forward, lighting the cigarette rather severely from one of the candles in the ritual circle. His father’s sleeve had caught fire.

Nathan inhaled the smoke, and within seconds everything felt warmer, steadier. He inhaled deeply enough that under ordinary circumstances, Victoria would have called him an asshole - and then he did so twice more before handing it over to her.

Then he remembered, “Oh, no, wait, Max is fine. Rachel’s okay too. They showed up just in time to watch.”

Victoria exhaled a little cloud of smoke while she thought about her reply. “So, you did it.” She took another draw from the cigarette, another exhale. “I guess that’s good.” She handed it back over to him, but he just held it in his fingers for a moment, watching the light of the burned paper fade out entirely.

Another lengthy pause, and then Victoria conjectured, “You’re scared.”

Nathan nodded to himself, and finally took a puff from the cigarette. “You’re not wrong.”

Victoria pulled her legs up against herself, wrapping her arms around them. She hated how his fear diluted her relief. “Why? It’s over, isn’t it?”

Nathan nodded, still unfocused, still not looking at Victoria, or his dad, or anything. “Yeah. And I just killed my dad. In there or out here, I did. And there’s no covering up this one.”

Victoria turned towards Nathan, watching his exhale while she tried to sort through everything he was feeling, everything she was feeling. She thought she was right, but her tongue was halted on the words. She read them out defensively, “Do you want to kill yourself?”

The cigarette sat unattended while he breathed freely. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve been thinking about it pretty much since I saw Max and Kate at the hospital.”

She was silent, while he watched her from the side of his vision. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth as he stood, offering his hand down to her. “But I’m not going to, promise. I can see the future, after all, and my pretty face is all over it.”  
Victoria took his hand and stood up for a second, still letting her hand hover once he let go of it before slugging him in the shoulder, too hard as always. “You better,” she cautioned.  
“Damn,” he whined, the cigarette dropping from his hand as he started rubbing the spot. “That is not a very nice way to ask,” he admonished, making his way over to the digipad to get them out. It had begun to smell in the room. “Let’s just go be big damn heroes, all right?”

0705, _Click.  
_ And they walked away, set free by the deaths of both Prescott parents.

 

* * *

 

Within an hour, it appeared every officer from Arcadia Bay was crawling all over Pan Estates after sealing the area off from the freeway. With maybe thirty students having disappeared from Blackwell and having appeared there the night that Sean Prescott’s home caught fire, the small department was at the end of the rope trying to process everyone, as no one appeared to have an understanding of where they were, nevermind why they were there. A few students tried to return to their cars and leave, but they were quickly herded on the backside of the blockade, where their statements were being taken. An ambulance had already arrived and taken Max away, although that had required an officer to even get her to a point that she was accessible on the path into the Estates. She had thoroughly protested, but considering the state Berry had found her in, blood-soiled clothes and all, she was promptly ignored.

Victoria and Nathan weren’t found until later, when the police had begun to arrive and were trying to respond to the crowd of Blackwell students. Victoria had expected that they would be immediately arrested, considering their state, but instead they were simply told to wait while the police tried to clarify the situation. Kate found them sitting together by the side of the road, but as she tried to approach them, Officer Berry deterred her and directed her to another officer, so she could explain to everyone why he had found her bound in a basement.

And that is what led to Officer Berry crouching down beside Victoria, on the side opposite of Nathan, at about 5:00am on Friday the eleventh, October 2013.

“I take it you two are the ones who called in an anonymous tip about a bunker underneath the Prescott barn all the way out of nowhere four or five hours ago, huh?”

Victoria turned just her head towards him, as if she could somehow conceal the massive bloodstain against her stomach. “What? No. I mean, we have no idea how we got here. I was just at the End of the World party when-”

“When you left immediately after Mark Jefferson, a teacher at your school, right? Your friend, Miss Christensen, doesn’t seem to remember much, but she does remember you winning some award and then leaving the party last night.”

Victoria swallowed, but quickly followed up, “Well, I wanted to go celebrate with my friend Kate a little and-”

“Kate Marsh?” he quickly countered, “A student whose room was found partially destroyed early this morning by a fellow student, Courtney Wagner? A student who was found on this property, bound and subdued by her classmates?”

Victoria’s eyes slipped past Berry to find Kate, talking with an officer, a blanket wrapped around her body. That all sounded pretty bad, but wasn’t the half of what happened to Kate tonight. Still, she had to be surprised.

“Well, I, uh . . . I can’t say I remember. I wasn’t feeling too great as I left the party, and I . . . ah.”

Nathan cut in, wondering if he could somehow save Victoria from this, “Tori was just a bit wasted with her girlfriend - I saw her leave when I pulled up to the school. They were probably just off to fuck or something and she doesn’t know how to use that.”

Berry sighed, looking down at his knees for a second as he thought. “Look, kids - I saw what happened in that weird-ass bunker tonight. The cameras in there, they record everything. And, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some freaky shit in Arcadia Bay, but I’ve never seen anything like I found in there. Now, do you care to explain to me what I saw?”

Silence.

He continued, “Or how about, despite all of this nonsense happening on his property, no one’s been able to get ahold of Mr. Prescott all morning? Know anything about that?”

Victoria replied slowly, “I . . . don’t remember anything, sorry. I must have blacked out somewhere between the pool and the dorms.”

Officer Berry just shook his head. “Well now, what a shame,” he said quietly, clearly frustrated, but even more exhausted. Then, he looked beyond her over to Nathan, speaking a little louder now, “You know, you’re gonna have to come with me, Mr. Prescott. To make sure you’re safe, of course, while we try to get this all settled.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Nathan replied, but made no steps to move.

Berry had no idea what he was going to do.

 

* * *

 

“Max Caulfield! What are you doing here? _In_ here?”  
Max closed the hospital door behind her as quietly as she could before turning towards the center of the room, where William sat beside an unconscious Chloe. The blinds were pulled closed, but the afternoon light glimpsed in through thin slits, bright against his fair hair. Like the night Max had visited them, he looked drained, like he’d been staring at his bills again, but his smile as she entered felt more genuine than anything she’d seen since she’d been back.

Max looked down at her gown, in replacement of the blood-soiled clothes she’d spent the night in. Despite it, once she had been able to wash clean a little, Max appeared remarkably unharmed despite having been thrown from the bed of a truck. “Oh, um, I was in a bit of an accident last night. I’m totally okay, and everything, but they’re not discharging me yet. I thought I’d come see how Chloe was doing.”

Now William just looked shocked before replying, “Are you all right? I mean, come here, sit down - what happened?” He stood up from his seat to offer it to her, and as she approached just settled into the seat right next to it.  
“I don’t really remember,” she confessed as she sat, folding her hands in her lap. “But I woke up this morning at Pan Estates with a bunch of other Blackwell students and . . . well, I don’t really know what’s going on yet.”

William had been experiencing little but surprise for the past two days, and it did not appear that this approaching its end. “Pan Estates? Joyce got a call this morning about a fire down there, that a couple of kids snuck onto the property and set fire to one of the houses. Were you with those kids, Max?”  
Max shook her head quickly, now confused herself. “There was a lot more than a few kids down there, and nobody seemed to know what was happening. I didn’t even know what caught fire. An ambulance took me here before the police were really there, though, so I dunno.”

Now frazzled man formed a serious look, and his voice got quieter, “Now, Max. You . . . you haven’t been doing drugs with that campus frat club, have you? I’ve heard those parties can get pretty-”

Max quickly waved her hands in front of her defensively, though, “No, no! Totally no, William, no drugs, promise.” She paused for a brief second, then added quieter, “Well, I mean, I smoke pot sometimes, but I’m not like, a partier . . .”

And William actually cracked up a little, watching Max’s face fall in confession. “Well, that’s not really what I mean. I mean, even me and Joyce and Chloe have-” but then he cut off, flushing with embarrassment as Max’s eyes went wide with wonder.

It took Max a long time to wipe the shit-eating grin off her face, but that was when a detail behind William caught her eye - Chloe’s eyes were fluttering a little, working hard to cast off their sleep. Max leaned forward in expectation of some sudden awakening, but after thirty seconds or so, Max was disappointed.

“How’s she been?” Max asked, quietly now, turning her body to watch Chloe.

William sighed a little bit, thinking of how to answer. “Well,” he began, “She’s been in a lot of pain. She woke up late last night and they had to give her some morphine - she’s been out since this morning. She asked for you, though, before she fell asleep. I figured you’d have been asleep at the time, but I guess not. It’s only high-speed car chases for Super Max in the morning.”

The reminder of morphine brought a grim look to Max’s face, unsettled despite how calm Chloe looked right now. “It’s like . . . her spine, right? That’s why she’s in pain all the time?”

“Well, normally, it’s a lot more complicated than that. The fluid that builds up in her lungs and sort of . . . the collapsing is what normally hurts. But you’re right, last night she woke up with pain in her spine. A lot of pain, but . . . she hasn’t felt anything below the base of her neck in a long time. The pain might actually be a good thing - if she’s feeling something again and her hands keep moving, she might . . .” he sort of gestured with his hands a little, sort of groping his chair arm.

“Yeah, yeah, I get what you’re saying. That’s good. That’s really good . . . _huh._ ” 

And that’s when Max put it together. Her bullet hole-less stomach and concussion-less brain and Chloe’s maybe-moving hands.

“I’m happy,” she said again, quietly.

“Yeah,” William sighed, bringing his face to his cheeks and pressing his jaw between his fingers. “I hope it will all turn out for the best. I don’t . . . I want this pain to be a sign that things are getting better, not worse.”  
Max reached out and touched his arm for a moment, trying to pull him out of his doubts. “I think it is, William.” She squeeze his arm for a second before letting go, “Maybe right now is the time for . . . a little faith.”

William almost laughed, but he could see in Max’s eyes that she was serious as she said this, and that only perplexed him . . . but it calmed him too. Max watched his eyes soften, and he finally let out a little chuckle - “When’d you get so calm and wise, huh? Lot of hippies down at Blackwell?”  
“Just a few,” she shot back, grinning.

A long silence prevailed, but Max did not mind it anymore. It was the afternoon, and Arcadia Bay was all right. Kate was all alive, Victoria was alive, Nathan was alive. Max did not know where Rachel was - she had sat inside her so heavy, in her stomach like bile, that it was hard not to feel relieved without the feeling of her. Max would find her again, she knew she would.  
For a little while at least, they were safe - whatever would come of the past few days, she wouldn’t know until the police began to sort things out. She knew they’d question her soon, after all of the photo evidence had been released on her blog, but no officers had been by to see her yet.

Max stood quietly, and took the small step to stand beside Chloe’s bed, dropping her small hand like a protective blanket over Chloe’s. Max knew she couldn’t feel anything, but all the same, Chloe seemed to jerk a little in her sleep. After a second, a quiet, but clear name came to her lips, “Max . . .” but she was still asleep. Max squeezed in response, and smiled.

 

* * *

 

As Max arrived back at her room, she was surprised to find someone waiting in a hall chair just outside. Principal Wells sat with a briefcase in his lap, looking down at the opposite end of the hall, clearly uncomfortable as his fingers fidgeted with its handle.

“Hey there Principal Wells,” Max called as she approached, announcing herself to avoid scaring him.

Luckily, he seemed immediately relieved upon seeing her, and grabbed an arm rest to help push himself up. “Max Caulfield - how are you feeling? I’ve heard you had a grueling night.”

Wow. That was one summary. “I’m doing fine - as you can see, I’m good enough to go see a friend who’s here for treatment. What are you . . . well, doing here?”  
This question seemed to surprise him a little, and he made a grumble before responding, “Well, of course, I heard about what happened last night with the Vortex Club party, and I heard you had been injured, although I’ve been told nothing about some of your classmates. Are you sure you’re feeling all right? I was told you were in an automobile accident.”

Max nodded quickly and truthfully, at least as far as he was asking. “Yeah, I mean, it’s a miracle,  but I’m okay. Have you heard anything about the car who hit us, or about, um, Kate Marsh? Or Victoria Chase?”

Principal Wells shook his head for a moment, and then clarified, “Miss Marsh went home with her family a few hours ago - you won’t see her on campus today. I have heard nothing about Miss Chase, as I told both her parents hours ago. As for the man who hit you, he is here as well. It appears he was thrown from his truck, but I’ve been told he’s stable and he’s going to be all right.”

Wells cleared his throat for a second, remembering the second purpose of his visit, and said, “Now, seeing as both you and your doctor have assured me of your miraculous good health, and I’ve been told you’re ready for discharge, I’ll take you back to Blackwell when you’re ready. Furthermore, a fellow student of yours, Miss Wagner, informed me you’d be needing a change of clothes for your return, and preemptively brought them to me to deliver to you.”

Now it was finally Max’s turn for surprise as he offered the briefcase to her, and she noticed it had been unlatched so she could peek inside. Her hoodie, a white shirt with a doe, and a plain pair of jeans. Very her. Weird. “Well, gosh, I’ll have to thank her for that . . . I hadn’t even thought about it.”

“It was . . . very considerate,” Wells stated, but it was clear that the gesture had been strange to him. He moved past the thought quickly, though, and suggested, “Well now, you had better get changed - I’ll find some help to hurry along your discharge, and we can head back to campus.”

Max nodded, and gave a small smile. “Thank you, Principal Wells. I’ll be just a minute.”

He nodded, and Max turned and entered her hospital room. She kept her head down for a moment, looking down at something so familiar and easy, and still so surprised that Courtney had even known where she was, that she would need clothes.

And just as Max set the briefcase on her bed, she remembered - “Shit!” she exclaimed. Fuck! She had ruined Courtney’s shirt by getting shot and bleeding all over it. It had been so pretty, and Courtney had been so nice to let her wear it. They had just been getting to the point of niceness with each other, too. Hopefully, this briefcase of clothes just meant the dress-up privileges were revoked, not the friendship ones.

Max pulled the clothes out of the briefcase and set them on her bed, then moved to shut the blinds so she could change. As she reached the knob, however, she was startled by the faint reflection in the glass.

Rachel Amber stood where she ought to be with her arms crossed, clearly impatient. She jumped a little at the sight of Max.

“God!, there you are,” she exclaimed, clearly relieved. “I’ve been looking for you for hours - everything was pretty fucking hectic after you got taken to the hospital. You’re feeling okay, right - Kate got to you and everything?”

Max nodded as she replied, “Yeah, no, yeah, I’m all right. I was just checking up on Chloe - how did things go?”

Rachel looked unexpectedly taken aback, and her tone was unsettled when she finally responded, “Wait, Chloe is there, in the hospital? Is she okay? What happened?”

“Oh . . . oh, you don’t know.” Max sucked her teeth for a second, swiping her hair as she tried to think of the simplest explanation. “Chloe’s . . . Chloe’s going to be all right, don’t worry. William’s with her now, and Kate helped her heal, too.”

A small, strange smile crept up Rachel’s pink lips. “William?” She asked, but Max knew it wasn’t really a question. Then, she nodded shortly. “Okay, good . . . she’s okay.” And for the first instant in the few times Max had seen her, Max saw Rachel’s features soften - her brow released tension, and her back dropped a little.

There was a knock on the door; Max’s head whipped around to watch it. Then, Principal Well’s voice: “Max? Is it all right to come in?”  
Max’s look returned to the window, half-expecting Rachel to vanish like so many of her visions in the mirror had, but she didn’t. Rachel was smiling instead, and her hair was bright in the sun, creating an almost-disc of gold around her face. Max nodded, then turned back towards the door, “Just a minute!”

When she looked back at Rachel again, she found the bright girl blowing against the window, her face nearly pressed up against the thing all the while. After a decent patch of mist had formed, she began to trace a small design into it, breathing occasionally over it to keep it from shrinking. Max watched, fascinated, as the mist remained, as if Rachel’s fingers really were there, her breath really there, as if she were standing right in front of her.

Soon, the design was finished, and Max recognized the lighthouse.  
“Get there soon,” Rachel cautioned, stepping back from the glass, “There’s someone you’ve got to meet.”

A few minutes later, as Max signed her discharge form, she looked up to Principal Wells and asked, “Hey, I know we’ve got to get back, but could we make a really short detour?”

 

* * *

 

Apparently, getting in a car accident granted you some perks other than being escorted back to school by the principal. It also meant you could boss the principal around well enough to earn yourself a short ten minutes to be left out on a beach hiking path up to the city lighthouse in the complete opposite direction of the school. Ten minutes to get up and down a quarter mile hiking path and meet someone. It didn’t leave Max with a lot of time. As soon as she was past his line of sight into the treeline, Max began to book it up to the lighthouse. It was after 5pm, and light was dropping rapidly from the sky, bleaching the trees in warm tones. Were it any other day, Max would have been setting up for some nature shots in a place like this. For now, she was just glad to be rid of the rain, to hear the freeway distant instead of the hush of the storm air.

Max saw no one when she reached the lighthouse, but  that didn't exactly surprise her. Nothing was so simple anymore. She kept moving forward, up until the reached the door, fully expecting to just ignore the Keep Out and trespassing warning and find her stranger inside.  
Then, she heard the voice, a familiar voice. “Max,” it greeted softly. Her voice.

Max stopped, and turned around, finding a small woman in a sleeveless black dress standing there, gazing out over the gentle water. Her hair was brown and short and neat, quite in contrary to how Max must look herself right now. Max paced away from the door, and came to stand beside her other self, staring out at the saturated-gold water and stained orange sky, waiting to understand.

“You came,” said the girl in black.  
Max replied, “Yeah, of course. Rachel said I’d find you here.”  
The lips of the other girl curled down a little. “Oh . . . huh.”

Max scratched the back of her head, surprisingly at a loss outside of a crisis or warning. “So, what did you want to see me for?”

It took the girl in black a while to respond, as her head tilted up towards the sky, and her eyes closed. She took a deep, slow breath. Her tone was almost harsh when she finally spoke, “I’m giving it up.”  
Max turned, watching her closely, but the girl’s eyes still did not open yet.

The other Max nodded to herself, and repeated, “I’m giving it up - the powers. I tore the world apart. I tore it apart, and I would do it again. I saved so many of them . . . and it’s not enough, and I would do it again.”

“Max, what are you saying? What did you do?” Max’s voice was saturated with concern, and she finally turned her whole body towards the Max in black,

Finally, that girl’s eyes opened, and she turned in kind to look at Max, so they could slightly avoid each other’s eyes in kind as if wrapped in thought. When she spoke, her voice was uneasy, uncertain, “I . . . I traveled through time. Over and over again. Always for the right reasons, I thought, but now . . . I don’t know. I never know if I’m making things worse or better, even now. So I need to know - will you help me?”

Max reached out, and took the other girl’s hand in her own, holding it up at chest height. “Max,” she said, “I don’t know if I . . . if I’d even be alive without you. I’ll help. Just tell me how.”

The other Max turned her hand around and grasped Max’s wrists with both hands. She smiled gently, almost glad. “Take it,” she said flatly, then again, “Take it, please,” like a plea. “Take my power, I don’t care how you use it. But keep me from turning back time again, please. I want to save her so much, I don’t know what I’ll do to make that happen. Please, Max.”

Max sat stunned, her hold loosening somewhat. She knew the power she was being offered. She felt it close to her, in her hands for that brief moment when she was in the dream. She could feel it humming in her hands now, but she could not grasp it. It was not hers. “I . . . I don’t think I can. I’m not powerful. All I’ve done is hide from what’s been going on, crying when I couldn’t take it. I’m weak.”  
Max’s eyes fell down towards their hands, but the other Max’s hand was quick up, pushing her chin back up, although their eyes still never met. They just stayed on equal ground.

“Not anymore. I can feel it. You and me - we’re not that girl who abandoned Chloe, who couldn’t stick up for herself. I won’t force this power on you if you don’t want it, but I trust you, okay? You’ve helped me, and I’ve helped you through this week. You’re the only person I can trust with this. Will you trust me?”

There was a buzz of something between them, like waves spilling out from where they met. The two Max’s hands pulled out from the stack of them, but their hands remained together all the same, a tether.

“I . . . “ Max faltered.  
_Can I do it?_ She wondered. _Should I? Could I stop this all from happening?_

  
_Do I rewind?_

_ _

_Art by[reneitl](http://reneitl.tumblr.com/) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should Max accept the power? Please comment and tell me which ending you would like me to write. I have both outlined, but I want to know which epilogue people would prefer.
> 
> Thank you for taking this ride along with me.


	10. Metamorphosis (Epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max accepts the power, severing the two Maxes from each other.
> 
> And she rewinds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By a vote of 3-2, this is the canon ending of Life in Snippets. When I release the other ending, it will appear in Special!: Life in Snippets, as "What if . . ."
> 
> -
> 
> Thank you so much for every single person who has read 'Life in Snippets'. I started it eight months ago as a small fluff piece called 'A Happy Snippet', and somehow has become the largest work I've ever created (even off AO3). It has been amazing to write, and I've loved every ounce of feedback I've gotten on it. I never would have imagined getting more than a dozen readers to small pieces, nevermind the dozens who have read the entire story (and hundreds who have looked at it here and on Tumblr, whoah).
> 
> If you've liked this story, and especially this ending, please just say something in the comments. I wanted to give the Alternate Universe of Life is Strange its due, Kate her revenge, Victoria her chance to be what she could be, and Nathan . . . well, each of these things.
> 
> Feedback is always welcome and encouraged.

“I’ll do it.”

Max met the eyes of her other self finally, hardening her face in resolution. She squared her feet and stood up straight, like she were taking a vow. She could feel the thrum of power between their hands, beating with her heart, and she could see the weariness that the power had burdened the other Max with.

She was right. She was not weak anymore.

“I’ll take the power, and I’ll set things right. No more victims, Max.”

They just held each other’s gaze for a moment. Then, the Max clad in black let go and practically rushed forward, pulling Max into a tight hug with her arms over her shoulders, as if to comfort her. “Thank you Max,” she said, her voice cracking. “Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would have become without you.”  
Max held her other self close for the first time for anything but protection. She was not protecting her anymore - they were setting each other free. Free from the need to fix things, free from the helplessness of not being able to. They could both be free.

They stayed for that moment, knowing that both of their worlds were about to change. But they both had places to be.  
And so Max took a step back, wiping her face free of the tears with her sleeve. “How do we do this? I don’t even know how I got my powers in the first place, nevermind how to . . . transfer them.”  
The other Max shook her head. “Don’t worry - I can . . . feel what to do when you’re close. I think it _wants_ free of me. Just take my hands.”

Max offered out her hands, palms up, and the other Max wrapped her fingers around them, cradling them. They fidgeted for a second, as if the hand placement had to be just perfect. The hum that Max could feel began to feel like a surge outwards, just barely held back, like the ebb and flow of blood into a dead limb.  
Finally, the answer seemed to descend upon the other Max, and she whispered quietly, “Max.” They looked up at each other’s blue eyes, and then she added, “Max, rewind. Just grab it - and _pull_.”

She could feel it. Those waves emanating from her hands - waves of time. All she had to do was reach out and touch it.  
She took a long, deep breath, and then a shorter one, like she were about to plunge into a pool. And then, she pulled.

 

Max stood on the first step up to the door of the lighthouse, her hand outstretched to open in it despite the sign warning otherwise. The same bright sunset shone from her left, and she turned to face it, seeing a short, brown-haired girl dressed in black gazing out over the calm water.  
Max turned out towards her, dropping her hand. “Max,” she said aloud, but there was no response from the other girl. “Max!” she called, trying to gain her attention, but to no avail.

A second later, the other Max turned away from the sunset and began her journey down the path down to the beach, leaving Max alone on the steps before the lighthouse. She had somewhere to be for a girl she could not save. At the treeline, Max thought she could see a speck of blue fluttering after her, leaving Max entirely alone.

Max turned back towards the door of the lighthouse, looking down at her hands. She could feel it everywhere, so strong at every moment, pushing and pulling her in every direction. _Time_. It seemed to flow through her fingers and spread everywhere, leaving her skin hot, the air humid with the stuff. One second it was gaseous, intangible. Another, it was liquid, leaving her hands and feet drenched in it, slowing her down. Sometimes, it was solid, sitting in the palm of her hand.  
Max ascended the last steps up to the door of the lighthouse, and looked once again at the sign. **Keep Out** , it warned her. **Trespassers will be prosecuted**.

She placed her hands upon the door, spreading out her fingers so her palms lay flat against it.  
She was no trespasser.

She pulled at time, and felt a little portion of the world slip away as the door was replaced with nothing but emptiness, a white portal beyond which she could perceive nothing.  
Max took a deep breath. She knew that she belonged there, somewhere beyond the door. But there was no coming back from it.

She didn’t look back. She just took the few steps it took to enter the doorway, and fell through into nothing on the other side.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Hello? Are you all right, Maxine?”

Max blinked several times in succession, somewhat dazed, turning her head to look around her. Taylor. Nathan. In the distance: Stella, along with Warren, their fingers laced together and swaying as they spoke in some intimate moment.

Where was she?

She tilted her head back, and she remembered. Her head lay nestled on the velvet-adorned lap of Victoria Chase.

“Max, never Maxine.”

Victoria rolled her eyes and smiled down at her defiant girlfriend. She ran her hand through the tiny brunette’s hair as she started responding, “Oh, right, of course, Max. Are you all right? Do you want to head back to the dorms and blaze?”

Max looked straight into her eyes for a moment, as if lost, but the stare became increasingly focused, and Victoria couldn’t break her gaze. “What is it?”

“Ugh, she is so out of it. This is why I didn’t want her in the Vortex Club, she cannot maintain her cool.”

“Oh, chill out Courtney, you don’t want anyone joining the Vortex club.” Courtney had been very negative around Max ever since Victoria had expressed interest in her, as the two photographers rapidly took to spending a lot of time together that had previously been reserved for Taylor and Courtney. Taylor had been distracted for the past few weeks and it hadn’t really seemed to get to her, but Courtney …  
The thought ended there, because Max was still looking up at Victoria.

“What’s wrong, Max?”

She shook her head, the tips of her hair falling over Victoria’s knee onto the grass. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Her fingers swept around the back of Victoria’s neck and pulled her down. The smile returned to Victoria’s small, pink lips as she leaned down, kissing Max softly. She seemed to have expected the sort of peck they normally reserved in front of their friends, but Max held her longer, unable to her go. It was warm and unusually intimate, but it Max could feel Victoria's body relax in it. There was nothing wrong. She was just a student at an art school and she was in love. It was _perfect_.

“Niiiiiiiiiice,” jeered Nathan.

Victoria broke the kiss with the anxious giggle of a child caught eating something they’d been told not to eat and they knew they’d get caught.

“See? They have no chill,” Courtney remarked, in hopes of evoking some sympathy from Taylor, who was involved with her phone.

Taylor looked up from the screen: “Hmm? Oh. Yeah. Totally.” She wasn’t sure what just happened, and that signaled to everyone else how irrelevant it was. Courtney was denied her spark of attention.

Victoria traced the side of Max’s face with her finger. “I love you, Maxine.”  
Max didn’t correct her, she just kept looking up, but her eyes began to glisten and crinkle, and her lip curled in the smile-grimace of crying. She turned her head towards Victoria’s belly and hugged her as well as her position allowed.  
“I love you too, Victoria Chase.”

Victoria kept her arms wrapped around Max’s torso as a poor substitute for a proper hug.  
She looked so surprised as Max suddenly stood, breaking Victoria’s embrace and grabbing her photography bag in the process. She didn’t even look at Victoria again as she said, “I’ve gotta go. I’ve got to see Chloe.”

“What?” Victoria sounded confused and affronted. “What do you mean? I thought you weren’t going for another few hours?”  
Max shook her head, pulling her bag on and pulling the strap to tighten it around her like a brace. “No. I’m sorry, I forgot, I just have to go right away. I’ll be back in the morning.”

Victoria emitted a sound of disbelief as Max leaned down and pressed a kiss into her warm cheek. As she walked away, Courtney’s eyes followed her just as intently as Victoria’s did, though her disbelief did much less to stop her from talking.  
“She is like, soo spazzy. I don’t know how you deal with it.”

Victoria just sat in silence for a long moment. It was a moment of tension wherein nobody even tried to speak to her, so unfamiliar were they with the look of shame, the redness that flooded her cheeks in sobriety. The corners of Nathan’s mouth turned down, but he finally just turned to Hayden to quell some comment on his desire to invite Dana to the End of the World party.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

As Max sat on the bus, she tried to figure out her next move. She didn’t have much time left if she wanted to prevent the freak events that set this all in motion. It was Sunday, October 6, and she gained her powers October 7, at 4:15pm. The snowfall hit around 7:00pm on the same day.  
She could still save them.

Max pulled out her phone, scrolling down her contacts like an inventory of weapons until she found the one she wanted to use.

 

 

> **Max:** Frank, I found out something about how Rachel disappeared. Can I meet you tonight and tell you what I found out? I’ll need you to be sober, and try not to freak out.  
>  **Max:** I know I’ve never asked about her, and I didn’t mean to find anything out, but I did, and you need to know.

Max didn’t get her response until she was stepping out of the bus a few blocks away from the Price residence. The sun was so hot and bright for so late in the day that she was sweating underneath her sweater (har), and she had to lift her hand up to shade her screen.

 

 

> **Frank:** what the fuck are you talking about? what do you know about rachel?
> 
> **Max:** Seriously, tonight. I can’t let anyone know where I am until then - I’m not sure I’m safe.  
>  **Max:** I’ll send you my location in a few hours.  
>  **Max:** Bring Pompidou

Then she switched her phone to off as she strolled as calmly as she could up to Chloe’s door.  
A deep breath, then another.  
_Knock, knock._

After a few seconds of delay, William opened up the door, and took a step back in surprise as he saw who was standing there.  
“Max Caulfield!” - his voice was filled with awe, and Max flushed in her shame all over again. Then he stepped forward into the doorway, a smile quickly pushing his face up, “Taking a break after taking Seattle by storm.”  
Then, his face pinched and his voice dropped in his characteristic monologue, “We thought we’d never see you again after you left for the big city.”

Max shook her head. _No. Never._  “No,” she replied. “I'd never do that to Chloe.”

That seemed to remind him, and he immediately stepped part-way back into the house. “Speaking of . . . I know she’s been dying to see you. Hold on.” He turned and entered the house in its entirety, and Max fidgeted with her sleeves. What was she even going to say? Could she say the truth? Did she have to pretend she had never done this before? Chloe would believe her.  
“Chloe! You have a visitor!”

Chloe must not have heard the conversation earlier, as a few seconds later, she turned the corner from her room in her chair and pulled up towards Max, a bright smile dawning on her face. It wasn’t until now that Max realized how much she and Rachel looked like one another - the softness in their faces, their bright hazel eyes, their shiny blonde hair. Like little angels.  
“Hey Max! You’re here early.”  
“Well, I couldn’t wait any longer,” Max replied stepping in, immediately descending upon Chloe and wrapping her arms around her as well as she awkwardly could, hugging more chair than friend, “You’ve got the siren call.”

“Pfft,” Chloe grumbled, letting Max pull away before continuing, “That’s one name for my mixtape, for sure. How’re you doing, dude?”  
Max put a finger to her chin as if thinking deeply, “Well, I’m amazing now, and that’s what matters. You ready for a night of Bladerunner and fizzy drinks?”

Chloe look pleased, reversing her chair carefully while Max followed along, William exiting stage left into the kitchen. “Damn, Max, good call - _Bladerunner’s_ probably my favorite movie these days.  
Max grinned, following after Chloe - she looked over at William as they passed, and he raised a glass as she did, asking whether or not she would like some water. She nodded, then turned back to Chloe, “Really? Good thing I didn’t bring my movie suggestion, then - I thought you might be in the mood for some _Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within_.”

Chloe grimaced at the words. “My god, have mercy on you. My eyes and ears still work you know, if not much below that.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Their time on the beach had not been so awkward this time around, despite Max’s profuse apologies. There was so much less fear for Max, and she thought perhaps for Chloe too - they managed to slip right back into their bullshit, fresh though it was. Gags about photography, shit-talking people that Chloe had known in school, talking about Victoria. But not time travel. That was too much too soon.

Max had only just put _Bladerunner_ in when she immediately paused it, taking a seat next to Chloe, who only gave her a quizzical expression as she fiddled with her sleeves, trying to find the right words. There were, in all likelihood, none that were right. Only the ones that were honest.  
“You’re in a lot of pain, Chloe, even though you’re trying not so show it.”

Max kept her eyes up on the unmoving screen while Chloe turned to look at her as best she could.  
“Huh?” Chloe asked, and then, “Nah, I mean, today’s a pretty good day, actually. Pain-wise _and_ in general. It’s normally way nastier, let me tell you.”  
Max shook her head, and slowly deflated against her chair. “That’s not what I mean. You think you’re at your limit.”

Chloe continued to stare at her for a moment, and then her gaze, too, returned to the blank screen. She sighed. “And when’d you get mind-reading powers?”  
Max did not offer a response, both because the answer to that question didn’t make a lot of sense and because she knew Chloe would cut the bullshit if Max didn’t play into it.  
“Look, I . . .” Chloe began, her voice unsteady, but then she stopped to take an extra breath. “Um, can you get my water? There’s going to be some talking.”

Max nodded and stood up, heading over to Chloe’s water and pulling out the bent straw to its full length. She sat, or leaned really, on the edge of Chloe’s bed and reached out, offering the drink to her lips.  
The cup was nearly empty before she was done drinking.

Chloe swallowed, but seemed to realize she wasn’t going to have any responses. “Look. I don’t know if my parents texted you or something, but . . . yeah. It looks like I’m. I’m gonna die. Pretty soon, I guess.”  
Max reached out and lifted Chloe’s hand enough to wrap her own around it, but let her keep talking.  
“I, uh . . .” Max had not expected how fast the tears would come to Chloe’s face, but Chloe pushed on anyway. Max reached and grabbed a tissue, dabbing Chloe’s face as clean as she could - it didn’t seem to do much to obstruct her friend from talking. “I’m in a lot of pain, yeah, you’re right. Every day. Even with morphine it . . . it _sucks_ Max. It’s so much.”

When the tears were gone, Max leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Chloe’s forehead before sitting back down, taking Chloe’s hand again. “I found your morphine injector upstairs . . . they took it out of your room.”  
Chloe nodded kind of jerkily, but there were no more tears yet. “Yeah, I, I uh. I got kind of high and I asked my nurse to . . . to . . . well, you know.”  
Max nodded that she understood and squeezed Chloe’s hand, even if she could not feel it. “Yeah, I know. I’m so sorry, Chloe, that you’re in so much pain.”

“Well, I mean, it’s not so bad,” Chloe replied, but her voice broke entirely and the tears started again - Max was quicker this time, and just grabbed the whole box of tissues. “I mean, I have a lot of time to watch 80s cyberpunk, and that shit’s a lot better high, and I’m high like 16 hours a day, so . . .”  
But now she was sobbing, and tissues weren’t going to cut it until clean up. Max leaned towards her as well as she could, wrapping her arms around her lightly again, letting her tears soak into Victoria’s old sweater. Max pressed another kiss into her hair. “I’m so sorry, Chloe, that I haven’t been here. I was a coward. I was so scared of what we’d already lost, I didn’t think about what we’d lose if I didn’t come back. I’m sorry.”

They just sat there in that awkward pose while they cried, although Max realized Chloe was making a concentrated effort to cry quietly to keep her dad from coming in to check on her. When Max finally felt that she could speak clearly again, though, she spoke in the firm whisper that came with crying, “But I’m not going to be a coward anymore, okay? I’m going to be with you from now on. Through everything. I’m never leaving you.”  
“Goddammit,” Chloe breathed through Max’s shirt. “I was going to be so cool and punk rock but now I’m fucking crying. What the fuck.”  
  
Max leaned back a bit, so that she and Chloe could look each other in the eyes. “I love you, Chloe. I’ve been a bad friend but I love you so much.”  
“Yeah,” Chloe replied with a smile that looked like a grimace, “I love you too Max. Best friends forever, you know that.”  
Max left another kiss on Chloe’s forehead, and this time she thought she left her friend a little warmer. “Forever.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Chloe was asleep maybe half an hour into the movie, but Max’s cheek just rested in her hands, trying to decide whether or not it was time to go. The time was not getting any better, and she had no idea how much time this would take. Considering how last night had gone, though, it was doable in one night with enough dedication and fear.

She finally switched her phone back on, and found several neglected messages from Victoria and Frank. She decided to start with Victoria.

 

 

> **Victoria:** Max, are we cool?  
>  Just wanted to make sure since you walked away so fast.  
>  Nathan was worried too.  
>  If you want to talk, hit me up, k?  
>  Love U!
> 
> **Victoria:** I know you’re with Chloe, but I’m sorry if I freaked you out with the ‘I love you’ thing like that.  
>  **Victoria:** I was just really caught up in a feeling all of the sudden  
>  So I hope that you’re not freaked or mad.

Max let out a ragged breath as she looked down at that. She had left Victoria worrying about how she felt about her. Victoria, who had just purchased a 5,000 dollar camera for her birthday, despite Max just asking for a few packs of film. Victoria, who had put her life on the line for Arcadia Bay.

 

 

> **Max:** I love you too  
>  **Max:** I seriously love you  
>  **Max:** I wasn’t freaked out  
>  **Max:** I just had the feeling that I had to go see Chloe  
>  **Max:** But I love you, I promise  
>  **Max:** I’ll be there in the morning.

Then she backed out, heading into Frank’s messages.

 

 

> **Frank:** you CANNOT just bait me with something like that  
>    
>  **Frank:** nathan doesn’t know where you are  
>    
>  **Frank:** listen to me you bitch, you need to start talking to me  
>    
>  **Frank:** where are you?

The last message was sent only half an hour ago.

 

 

> **Max:** Sending location in 10. Meet me ASAP.  
>  **Max:** You’ll want a full tank of gas, too.
> 
> **Frank:** whatever you’ve got to say better be good  
>  **Frank:** or i’ll shatter your fucking jaw, i swear

Max was outside of the Price house nearly without a sound. She continued down the sidewalk, shivering against the cold in her thin clothes. Victoria’s style required so much layering, which had never been Max’s strong suit. Hoodies + a given shirt length were good enough for almost any type of weather. Cardigans were good for the morning, and that was about it.

Max found a small playground that she and Chloe used to go to all the time. There once was a merry-go-round, but it appeared it had been removed, leaving only a swing set in a large sand pit.  
She sent her location, and then received a text.

> **Victoria:** I love you

Max allowed herself a smile under the light of the moon. Despite all of the insanity of this week, that she still knew. She was in love.

> **Max:** I love you  <3
> 
> **Victoria:** I love you

_Victoria sent a gif of a fawn being pet._

> **Victoria:** Like this
> 
> **Max:** I don’t know, seems like a lot of pressure  
>  **Max:** Maybe we should cut it back to sub-deer levels
> 
> **Victoria:** You goon  
>  **Victoria:** I’m glad you’re not mad
> 
> **Max:** Never.

Max saw the headlights only a few seconds before she could hear the rattle of trailer coming down the road. It stuck out bad enough along the coast with how dingy it was, but in this little suburban neighborhood it stuck out about as badly as Frank himself did.  
Frank must have spot her in his headlights, because almost immediately after they fell upon her the heavy RV began to slow, veering off towards the side of the road, passing her slightly as it came to a halt.

The lights cut out, and then the door opened as Frank stepped out, the RV parked facing the wrong direction, as well as in front of a ramp.

“Now, precisely whatthefuck is it you’d like to tell me about Rachel?” Frank moved immediately towards her, to intimidate her no doubt. He still thought they were on opposite sides of this.

Max folded her arms and looked straight up at him, aided somewhat by the fact that she could not see his eyes in the darkness. “Rachel was kidnapped at a Vortex Club party by Mark Jefferson, a teacher at Blackwell academy. He took her to a bunker paid for by Sean Prescott, underneath a barn you once delivered GHB to. The two of them used Nathan Prescott as a lure and drug mule for girls who attended parties at Blackwell. Rachel was one of them.”

Frank never seemed to have to think of a response - outwitting, out-threatening, and out-pop-culture-referencing people was one of his many impressive skills. But all he said in the seconds after Max finished was “What - the - fuck?” She could almost feel him squinting at her, but she did not look away. “The fuck are you saying? Where’s Rachel?”  
Max rubbed her arm, trying to fight the cold and bracing herself for his oncoming explosion. “Mark Jefferson and Sean Prescott killed her. She’s dead, Frank.”

She could hear him sucking in the air through his teeth. She hadn’t imagined that he would believe her, but instead of blowing up, his voice became quieter, “How . . . do you know about this? You sound fucking insane, you know that, right?”  
Max gave a terse nod at that observation, but continued, “Nathan wants out. And we’re going to free him.”

Frank was quiet again, and Max could see his frame sway for a second in thought. He had now gone two minutes without threatening her. “And why would I do that? You’re telling me this fucker and his dad helped . . . kill her, and you want me to help him out? I ought to put a knife in his gut and spatter his brains over the steps of his daddy’s school.”

Well, that was an unnerving level of detail. Frank had been fantasizing his revenge for a murder he didn’t know had taken place long before this.

“Because,” Max followed, unwavering, “He’s going to show us where her body is, and then he’s going to help you take your revenge - starting with his dad.”  
Frank took another step closer, so that his face was only inches from hers. She finally recoiled a little, but did not take a step away. “This is some bloody shit, Maxine. The fuck are you?”

Time pressed in around her, even here, where the tide was so far away. She could still feel it pass like water through her hands. “It’s just Max,” she replied.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I’ll get him myself - you wait here.” Max unfastened her seat belt in the passenger’s side of the RV.  
Frank shot her a look of what could only be described as pissed-off confusion. “And why is that, huh? I feel like I should be dragging him along myself, and you should be getting back to your dorms.”  
Now _that_ was starting to sound like a threat, but not for her.

Max shook her head. “He’s got a gun on him, but he won’t draw it if it’s me. I’ll get him out here, I promise. It will only take a moment.”

The longer Frank spent with Max tonight, the less he was doubting Max’s seeming omniscience, regardless of how suspicious it was. He had his story for what happened for Rachel now, and he knew what he had to do about it. That was all he had thought about in every bottle of beer for the past six months.  
“Be back here in fifteen, or I’ll go find that manor myself and burn it to the fucking ground.”

That was all that Max needed. She left the RV and continued down the last block to Blackwell, unafraid of encountering security. She could control time - what chances did anyone else have?

 

Max could feel the tobanga watching her as she ascended the steps to the boy’s dorm. She cast her gaze over to it, dragging her eyes over each of its carved faces, barely visible from one of the many lamps in the area. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the feeling it left on her, and continued inside, quickly making her way to Nathan’s dorm room.

_Knock, knock, knock._

No answer.

_Knock, knock, knock._

_Knock, knock, knock._

Nathan swung the door of his room open fast enough that Max could see that it ruffled his hair from the wave of wind. He stood there, naked but for boxers, with a furious visage covering his exhausted face.

“WHAT!?” he demanded at a yell.

Max placed a hand against the door, and rewound, watching Nathan snap back from the door, lie in bed, rub his face, and then apparently fall asleep. She released the rewind, and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.  
Nathan sleeps with the projector on, casting ghostly images upon his walls, constantly shifting. So much like him.

Max flipped on the light, in lieu of subtlety.  
Nathan snapped right up as if he had been doused in icy water, and Max flinched back at the suddenness

He hadn’t been asleep long enough for there to be any rasp to his voice as he demanded, “Whatthefuck are you doing in my bedroom? How did you even get in.”  
Her eyes narrowed into slits as she looked at him, her best imitation of Victoria, crossing her arms and leaning back against his door. “Shut up, Nathan,” she commanded, surprised at the snarl in her own voice. “I’m going to talk, and you’re going to stay very still, you understand?”

He reached up to rub his eye, as apparently this was not going immediately away. Max had never realized how sunken and dark they were, a sharp contrast to the pale, almost translucent quality of his skin. He reminded her of Chloe, decaying in her chair. “The fuck do you want, Max? It’s, like,” he reached for his alarm and checked the time. 12:45. “Oh. Well, still, I was asleep.”

She gave him a pointed look to remind him that it was time to shut up. He met her look for a second, and then she looked past him, taking a moment to sort through his room when she didn’t have the hurry of breaking in, and every detail wasn’t obscured by her high and the smoke that seemed to hang heavy in the room.  
“I know about the storm. I know about Rachel, and you, and your dad, and Jefferson. And I know some stuff you don’t know.”

She saw the blood drain from his face, like when she had read out the name Mark Jefferson over his hospital bed. “What are you-”  
“I said shut up,” she spat back, and, to her amazement, he complied. She didn’t think she had ever seen him so calm except when he was spaced out on something. For all she knew, he could be right now. And if he was . . . Sean might be listening in, or might take control of him.  
Her hand twitched along the threads of time.

She took a breath, and continued back into it, “Your fuck-up with Kate and what happened with Dana haven’t gone unnoticed. Jefferson is going to take retribution on you, to teach you a lesson.”  
She raised her eyebrows, to see if he understood. His breaths came in heavy, anxious gusts, but after a second, he said the answer aloud,” . . . Tori.” And then, the reality of what he was saying hit him. “No way. They’d never lay a hand on Victoria, they wouldn’t even think about it.” The words were like a challenge to Max, but she just took them with her head down towards the carpet.

She had to convince him.  
_Fine._  
“This coming Thursday night, you will be in the hospital after Justin and his friends beat you half to death for what you did to Dana. Mark Jefferson will kidnap Kate to finish what you two started. Frank, me, and Victoria will mount a rescue. Frank will be shot in the throat, Victoria in the stomach, Kate in the head, and Jefferson will keep me as his tranquilized pet while you try to kill your father. I have no idea if you can pull it off. But, whether you do or you don’t, I don’t want to live in that world.”

Nathan seemed almost agape as she spoke, but as she began to close, understanding began to dawn over his face, and he finally dragged himself away from his pillows, standing up off the edge of his bed, no longer self-conscious. “It’s you,” he said in a whisper, so hushed it could be mistaken as reverent. And then, a wild, nearly manic look seemed to break out on his face, throughout his body, and he began to howl with laughter, completely in disregard for the quiet of the dorms. “It really was you! It was never Kate - J just can’t separate his dick from his job. _Fuck_.” He seemed almost overjoyed at this news, though for what reason, Max cannot tell.

Max was not entirely sure what he was talking about. Yeah, she was the girl with the powers they were looking for, but why was Jefferson having any input into this? They had pretty firmly ruled out the photography ring as a component of Sean’s sick conspiracy, right?  
It occurred to Max how little she actually knew of what was going on.

Max checked her phone, to see that she still had time. Still seven minutes. Might be hard to cut it.

“Yeah . . .” she trailed off, not sure how to respond to Nathan’s sudden pacing and gleeful demeanor. “One more thing. Rachel said you’d know how to get her free, and I think she’d like to join us. Any clever ideas?”  
He squinted at her now, though he didn’t stop pacing about. “Wait, wait . . . you want to go and, what? Deal with them now?”

She gave him a pointed look. She wasn’t sure what expression conveyed: yes, I would really appreciate it if we could go kill your dad now; I’m on a schedule - but she must have nailed it, because he suddenly became still, and his eyes fixated on her, moving over her slowly with a nervous energy. She recognized he look. It was the look he gave dying things when he wanted a photo - it’s how he had looked at the man Victoria had nearly bludgeoned to death, how he must have looked at Dana when she was on the floor of this room.  
She finally noticed the broken lamp, and her breaking eye contact seemed to wake him back up.

“I think I know where she is. Just let me get some clothes . . . and, ah, some lighter fluid, I guess.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Max was so glad that English was still cancelled, because she had zero intention of going to class today, and any amount of GPA decline she could potentially mitigate was just awesome. It was 6:13am.  
As Nathan, Max, and Rachel’s ghost pulled up to the school and put Nathan’s truck in park, there was an awkward moment that came with him shutting the car off, the radio no longer on and leaving them in the quiet just after dawn. Nobody would be up on campus yet, except for Samuel, but the birds around campus made an absolute racket if you were conscious enough to hear them.

“So, uh, Rachel,” Nathan finally began, drumming his fingers on his steering wheel. He looked towards the center seat, where Rachel was sitting, mostly trying not to look at either of the other two. “Are we like, supposed to put you to rest or something? I don’t really know how this works.”  
She reached up and flicked her feather earring a few times before pinching it between her fingers. “Yeah, uh, I’m not really sure, but there’s no like, white light or anything. I think I just sorta . . .” she flattened her hands out and waved them in little circles, as if she were washing a window, “chill out.”

“Pfff,” Nathan blew, a note of pity. “Man, that sucks.”  
Rachel gave a pronounced shrug, pulling some hair behind her ear and finally dropping her hands back down. “Well, I _am_ dead.”  
That seemed to shut Nathan up, as he quickly became busy biting the inside of his lip.  
Finally, Max piped up, “Well, I mean, if you want to watch TV or anything you can come hang out with Victoria and me. And if you want to go to a party or graffiti cryptic notes, you can possess me again, probably.”

“Thanks,” Rachel replied quietly, but then, “Wait, what? I can possess people? Since when?”  
Max tilted her head, trying to run the calculation. She was never good with problems involving time. She should probably work on that. “Uh, like . . . 26 hours ago? Wait, no, 30? I don’t know, it happened in the timeline before this, though.”

Rachel looked really surprised, her eyes wide as she tried to process that. “Well, fuck, shit, that’s _really badass_.” She paused then, contemplating all of the possible avenues this opened up for her. And then, “But, ah, I’m probably going to have to say no to the movie night thing. Victoria and I don’t really . . . mesh,” she said, lacing her fingers together, clearly trying to demonstrate mesh but really detailing the exact problem in more graphic detail.  
Max tried not to think about that right now.  
Nathan rolled his eyes and countered, “Oh, come on. You did some dickish shit after fucking her and now you’re like a _ghost_. I think she’ll deal.”  
Rachel shot him a glare. “Have you _met_ Victoria?”  
Nathan and Max looked at each other from opposite sides of the cab.  
“Good point,” they replied in unison.

Max checked the time on her phone. “Yeah, so, I haven’t slept in . . . uh, negative three days, so I’m going to bed.” She opened up her door as Nathan gave a brief ‘same’ and pushed his door open as well.  
Rachel remained seated, clearly confused as to what to do next. Max looked back at her as she began to close her door. She swiped a finger under her nose and pushed her hair back a bit as she thought. “Um, I know Frank can’t see you and everything, but Pompidou can.”  
  
Rachel nodded, finally leaving the truck by just phasing her ethereal  self through the seats and following after Max. “Yeah . . . cool. I guess I’ll see you later, Max.”  
Max closed the door behind Rachel’s ghost, and Nathan clicked the doors locked before hiding the key above the driver’s corner tire. “Yeah, and I’ll actually see you,” she tried, pushing against all of the awkwardness and exhaustion to joke.

“God,” Rachel swore with a sigh, then turned to go. “I can already tell I’m going to possess the _fuck_ out of people.”

Max realized as she walked away that this Rachel hadn’t asked a single question about Chloe. The thought was brief, though, and she and Nathan made their way back to the dorms, parting after a brief examination of the torched Tobanga - apparently the fire department had already come and gone, because the campus was once again pretty still. They had to dodge Wells, Samuel, and some members of the security along the way, but with time magic in hand, that was very little of a problem.

Victoria did not wake up when Max entered her room, not even when Max slipped off her hoodie and shoes and fell into bed with her. Instead, she just let out a low grumble of ‘Max . . .’  and pulled her little spoon close.

Max was unconscious within minutes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Once the investigation into Sean Prescott’s death was underway, it didn’t take long for the ball to start rolling. The gun that shot Sean Prescott was identified as one of a pair purchased by Mark Jefferson, which was quickly located in the mud outside of the Prescott manor. While there were no prints to be found on it, the pieces were quick to come together after Nathan was brought in for questioning, and a locked phone as well as some disturbing records were brought from Blackwell Academy after the principal of the academy began to comply fully with the investigation.  
  
While Jefferson remained in jail, Kristine Prescott returned to Arcadia Bay to arrange the funeral of her father and to bail out Nathan under the guidance of a team of lawyers. It was already an absolute mess before things got even worse - Kristine discovered that her father had spent more than 100,000 dollars on renovations for an old family barn that still stood miles outside of Arcadia Bay. She was not able to enter the sealed bunker, but her integrity was great enough to turn over the location of the bunker to the ABPD, before all hell promptly turned loose.  
  
Frank Bowers was arrested for the possession and distribution of multiple schedule 1 controlled substances, while the DA also planned to nail him with accessory to the murder of Rachel Amber, which infuriated Rachel to no end. The final charge, however, was dismissed after the testimony of Nathan Prescott, who finally admitted his role in the abduction of not only the reported case of Dana Ward, but also Lynn Martin, Megan Weaver, and Rachel Amber, the last of which resulted in a charge for second degree murder. The charge was lowered to manslaughter and the possession of narcotics after he provided a confession against Mark Jefferson, eventually replaced with a contract that Nathan would spend five years in an institution for the criminally insane.

Originally staring down life in prison, Mark Jefferson eventually began to see the helpless position he had placed himself in by becoming embedded in such an unstable conspiracy. When he began to confess, he did so to alleviate himself of the charge for the murder of Sean Prescott, his co-conspirator, but let slip the further reaches of the conspiracy, prompting further investigation into the photo studio as well as Sean Prescott’s personal files.  
Officer Thomas Berry was relieved of his position during the investigation after the FBI became involved after the location of Rachel Amber’s body, and many politicians, government workers, and institutional executives came under fire for corruption, as well as the possession of child pornography in more than one case. An investigation into the record of former officer Thomas Berry led to the discovery of a connection between Nathan Prescott and an automobile accident that had left a local girl, Chloe Price, paralyzed from the neck down. No charges were brought up against Nathan or former officer Berry.

Kristine Prescott knew Joyce Price, and took notice of the Price family’s terrible financial situation after she lost her job at Pan Estates, thanks to the project being put on indefinite pause while the Prescott Foundation itself was under investigation. Under the guise of severance pay, Joyce was awarded a year’s salary, and in the time being was invited to act as secretary for the fumbling institute. More out of thankfulness than anything else, Joyce agreed.

After the discovery that Mark Jefferson and Nathan Prescott had carried out multiple abductions from Vortex Club parties, as well as the sudden discontinuation of funding for both the club and Blackwell in general, the Vortex Club was quickly dissolved, though Hayden Jones ensured that getting high and drunk otuside of parental supervision did not become a major issue. Victoria Chase and Max Caulfield, as Nathan Prescott’s closest friends, came under scrutiny by other students at Blackwell academy, and many students rallied around Dana Ward, despite the fact that she had tried to keep her police report quiet. Victoria and Max did their best to sink into the shadows, but found the other students tired of avoiding and examining them rather quickly, especially after graffiti around the school started to point blame at Nathan, Jefferson, and Sean, and to plead for sympathy on Max and Victoria’s behalf.  
Enough kids at Blackwell graffiti’d that Rachel did not feel so bad making their arms say nice things, sometimes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was early January, 2014, near the end of winter break, when Max and Victoria were lounging about at Victoria’s house for the day, doing laundry and getting away from that ‘horrible school’, as Mrs. Chase now referred to it. Max had been becoming increasingly distant as the weeks passed, leaving school almost every day at 4:11 to catch the bus to see Chloe, often just doing her homework next to an unconscious friend, maybe getting a few minutes of confused conversation out of a doped-up Chloe. On good days, they could watch movies, or even go to the beach to take shots, despite the fact that photography class was essentially a free period now. Most days were not good days. This break, however, had been the first time for Victoria and Max to be saturated with one another like they used to be early in the school year.

Max had decided not to tell her about Rachel, or about the other realities. Rachel didn’t really show up often enough to justify it, and Max did not want her to know how close they had all come to dying, how much they had suffered. Things were hard enough with Nathan, and every time that Victoria met up with Kristine, she always seemed to come back from the experience more upset and, more often than not, drunk.

They were sitting next to each other on the couch, folding laundry, when Victoria got a text. Victoria’s mother was up in Seattle for the weekend, attending to some business for the Chase Space, and Mr. Chase was rarely to be seen in his own home, preferring to chat up the wealthy and influential over golf almost every morning.  
Max watched as Victoria’s face lit up as she read the message. It was nice to see, as she smiled so little these days without getting a silly high, but at the same time, it made Max’s heart sink. She knew who was on the other end of that text message.

She decided to be direct, to stop pretending that she didn’t notice.  
“You’re kind of in love with Kate, aren’t you?”  
Victoria’s eyes went wide, but she was quick to drop her eyebrows down enough to hold an incredulous look out for Max. “Uhh, no? Why would you say that?”

Max sighed, neatly folding a shirt and then setting it down, not picking up anything new to keep her hands busy. She futzed with the sleeves of her hoodie. “Every time you see her or she sends you a text, you get all happy. Really happy. And I’ve seen you guys together. It’s not very subtextual, how she feels about you, but you’ve got feelings for her, too.”  
Victoria’s face pinched. Max knew she did not like to lie to her, and when Max was direct, it was hard to be evasive, to armor up against her. There was never the same subtle threat to her that Victoria felt from everyone else - that was one of the reasons she loved her.  
Victoria clasped her hands together, and took a few breaths to figure out what to say. “Look . . .” she started, at first appearing to reach out to take Max’s hand, but instead picking up some socks and folding them together. “I have feelings, yeah, but they’re my feelings, all right?, so I decide what to do with them. I love you. I’m not throwing that away over some crush.”

Max shook her head, and now she reached out, taking Victoria’s hand by the wrist and pulling it closer before fitting her own into it. Victoria looked right at her, but Max looked slightly down. “No, look, Tori. I get it. If I had the . . . the energy, I’d probably fall for Kate too - she’s sweet and smart and kind. I’m not jealous.”  
That was not entirely true. Maybe the first time around it was, where it felt like they were all being enveloped in this warm trust together, but now she could just feel Victoria drifting away from her, just like she was drifting away from Victoria, leaving a larger and larger rift between them.  
She squeezed Victoria’s hand. “I just want you to be happy,” she promised, and _that_ was true.

Victoria drew her breath between her teeth, sitting up like her mother had started talking to her. “Are you . . . breaking up with me?” she asked, flat-out. Max was surprised at how much fear she could hear in that question. Max was barely a person to break up with at this point.  
Max shook her head. It might be selfish, but she knew she didn’t want that. “No, no, of course not,” she promised, and leaned down to kiss Victoria’s fingers. “I know you love me, and I love you, too. But you don’t have to act like you don’t feel what you feel for Kate because of me. Love is the best thing to have. If you think you have it with Kate, hold onto it.”

Victoria’s eyes were beginning to wet, but she didn’t reach up yet to clear her eyes. She reached out with her other hand, holding Max’s with both of hers. “I don’t deserve you,” she confessed, just above a whisper.  
Max slipped out of her seat and onto Victoria’s lap, straddling her and taking one of each of Victoria’s hands in her own hands. “We don’t deserve each other, Victoria. But we want each other, and that’s worth it.”  
  
The laundry did not get done for several more hours, as their embrace dissolved into a kiss far unlike anything they had shared before. Max finally felt raw with her again, and she wasn’t going to let that feeling burn out so fast.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Victoria stood on one side of Max, while her own mother stood on Max’s other side. Everyone had known this day was coming, and the Caulfields were ready when they got the text from Max letting them know that Chloe had died, when the funeral was. They had arrived last night, and Max fell asleep in the hotel room with them. William and Joyce had breakfast with them before leaving to make the final arrangements.

And here they stood in the late afternoon, not even managing to encircle Chloe’s coffin. Max’s parents, Chloe’s parents, Kate, Victoria, some girl named Megan that Max had never met, even two people from Chloe’s disability community forum and chat. None of them were particularly religious aside from Kate, and her pastor had agreed to preside over the funeral at her request.

Max could not cry. She did not cry. She did not feel the waves of sobs crash over her like they did Joyce or Megan. She felt numb everywhere inside, and everywhere outside, she was drowning in the vortex of time. She could barely hear anything as the pastor conducted the whole thing, said some nice things provided by many of those in attendance about Chloe’s courage, her attitude, nothing about how much she had suffered for so long. There were some words about this grave injustice, but the pastor spoke of acceptance, of God’s Plan.

It was never God’s Plan that put Chloe in that casket. And it was not God who would pull her out of it.

 

Max had not known for a long time how far back she would have to go, how much of this world she would have to uproot to keep Chloe safe. She combed through every detail of the case against Jefferson and Nathan available to the public, she talked to Nathan when she still could, she made careful notes and kept them hidden in her notebook, as well-hidden as that might be. She broke into Well’s office to look at the copies of Nathan’s academic file, rewinding with it in hand a few minutes later.

She had only figured out the answer a few weeks ago. But she had promised Chloe that she would be with her forever, til the very end, and she did.

Max wished she could take something with her from this reality when she went back. She wanted to keep her photographs of Victoria and Kate and Taylor and Dana. She wanted to keep the pipe Nathan had bought for her, so that Rachel and she could share a bowl by possessing Max, passing control instead of a pipe. It had come to the point where Max could remain dimly aware when Rachel was inside her, where she could move her hand of her own free will. She could feel some of what Rachel felt when she was inside her body, and she could feel how desperately she wanted her body back, to eat her own food, to hold her friends, to touch Frank’s face for real.

That was why, just one of the reasons why, Max knew she had to go back. She could take nothing. She could not even take how Victoria felt about her. She had no idea how much might be lost in this rewind. It could be everything. It could be her whole world.  
But Chloe Price would not die so young, buried by the dozen people who knew her well enough to attend her funeral.

That is why she had gotten onto the visitation list for Frank Bowers, and why she sat across from him on April 24th, 2014, the day after they had put Chloe in the ground. Nobody understood why she was going to see him - he had only ever been her dealer, as far as anybody knew.  
Rachel came along with her, sitting in the chair next to her, leaning down on the table.

She knew what was coming - Max had told her, as well as Nathan. She wondered what it would feel like when she was erased.

“Hey there, Frank,” Max greeted, somewhat curtly. She was dressed conservatively, with a button-up shirt tucked into a skirt as well as a vest, similar to what Kate wore on most days.  
“Max-ine Caulfield. What the fuck are you doing here?” He didn’t sound angry, despite the words. As far as she was aware, Frank had no one on his visitation list except for his public defender and Rachel’s family, who had visited twice after learning about her relationship with the rough-looking dealer.  
They had taken in Pompidou, and he was thankful.

Max didn’t correct the name. “Rachel’s here too, in the seat next to me.”  
“Oh.” He blinked, looking over at the seat she indicated. “Uh . . . hi Rache.” His face softened. There were many times that he thought he felt her, back in his trailer as well as here. She hadn’t had a way to tell him that she couldn’t get here without a tether - trying to go where it was unfamiliar without Max or someone else to ride along with made every blurred, like someone had dragged the colors of a watercolor painting everywhere after they finished.

Rachel blinked, and reached out her hand, placing it on the table, palm up.  
“She says hi,” Max said, although Rachel had said nothing. She pointed to the spot on the table. “Her hand is right there.”  
He reached out, missing her by a few inches, but Rachel adjusted a little and put her hand over his. If he could feel her there, he did not indicate it.

“So . . . why are you here?” he asked. He looked away from where he guessed Rachel’s face would be, and dropped his gaze onto Max. “I doubt you’re here just to play _Ghost Whisperer_.”  
Max nodded, her folding her arms over her chest. “Yeah.”

_Silence._

Then, Max said, “I figured it out.”  
Frank waited for something more, then asked, “Well? What’d you figure out, Sherlock?”

Her lips pursed into a line. “I figured out how to save my friend Chloe. And how to save Rachel.”  
He leaned forward suddenly, forgetting about Rachel’s ethereal hand and placing his elbows up on the table. She had never imagined his eyes could get so hungry so fast. “What? How? Fucking - fucking do it, Max.” The last few words were more hushed, pulling his chair slightly forward.  
She looked at him warningly, and he put his chair back where it was.

“How?” he summarized.  
Max placed her hands on the table, sliding them forward a little, as if pushing a piece of paper for him to examine. “I can send you back. My powers have grown to something . . . I can rewind _you_ , and I can go as far back as I need. I know when to send you back to stop all of this.”

He sat there, with a stunned, but empty expression. After maybe ten seconds, he asked, stuttering for the first time she’d ever heard, “A-are you serious? I can go back . . . in time?”  
Her eyes locked with his, and she leaned forward, her hands halfway across the table. “Yes. And you can kill Sean Prescott.”

More silence. And then, he leaned forward like she did, pushing his finger down into the table, eyes and face and whole body rigid and intense. “Look. Even if you can do that, there would be no clever excuse that time. They’d find me, and I’d spend my whole goddamn life in here - fuck, I could end up with the death penalty by the time I’m in my . . . what, how old would I be?” He didn’t wait for a response to that. “My life would just be over.”

“Yeah,” Max admitted. “And Rachel would live. Jefferson would never even look at her, never set eyes on her. You’d go away, and she’d get to stay out there.”

His eyes slowly strayed away from Max’s face, in the opposite direction of Rachel. Just sitting, silent in thought, for over a minute. She could see the gears turning slowly through his mind, his eyes shifting slightly every few seconds.  
“Can I . . .?” he started, and let it hang for a second. Then finished, “Can I talk to Rachel?”

Max understood, and nodded.  
A second later, she shivered as Rachel slipped into her skin.

Her shoulders slouched down immediately. Her posture had always been terrible. She reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, though it was so short that it really didn’t necessitate it. “Hey there, babe,” Rachel said, barely above a whisper.  
A sad smile crept onto Frank’s face. “Hey, Rache. I’m going to do it.”  
  
Rachel shook her head, although she didn’t directly protest, “You don’t have to, Frank. I’m not gone. You’ll get out one day, and even if I can’t . . . I’ll still be close.”  
He closed his eyes, pretending it was really Rachel as he reached out hands and felt Max’s wrap around his. “No. Rachel, it’s not right, what happened to you. It wouldn’t be right for anyone but you . . . you had everything going for you. I knew that. I was never going to stand in the way of that. And I’m not now.”  
  
She squeezed his hands. “But I’ll . . . I’ll never meet you. I’ll never get to fall in love with you. I don’t know who I’ll be.”  
He let his eyes open slowly, to look her in the eye. “But you’ll live.”

She hung her head. Most of the fight she’d already done, screaming on the beach. Max had known there would be a fight when she took her there, so they could both yell and cry without interruption. She knew that, if Frank wanted it, Max would make sure it happened. Her mind had been made up for weeks.

“I . . . I’ll never forget you. I promise. I could never forget, not even if she unravels time.” Rachel promised aloud, as much to convince herself as to convince him.  
“I know,” he lied. “I love you.”  
It was the first time Max had ever seen him cry. It was not the first time Rachel had.  
“I love you too, Frankie. I always will.”

Frank nodded as tears began to roll down his face.

“Max,” his voice rasped. “Do it. Show me how.”

She clenched his hands again, but the change in her eyes alerted him to who was in control. “Just hold on,” she suggested. “You ready?”  
He nodded, and took a deep breath.

Max pulled, and felt the vortex finally consume her, pulling apart every wall of reality as everything in her vision disappeared into white. All she could hear, over and over was, “I won’t forget, I won’t forget, I won’t forget, I . . .”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Max awoke to the sound of applause.  
She stood in a brightly lit, low-ceiling-ed, awkwardly shaped room, with some of the walls turning at sharp angles to create little crevices or open up into open spaces. It was an older building from the look of it - support pillars reached from the ceiling before being submerged in some of the white walls that filled the space. Every wall was covered with a framed piece of artwork, though Max struggled to see many of them through the crowd of people, who all seemed to have congregated into a small area, a corner where many of the photo prints looked similar - monochrome portraits and landscapes, each with incredible depth and contrast. The style felt familiar to her, especially something about the framing, which was so dynamic and powerful that she could feel herself pulled towards each one individually, as if it were a movie and by not looking she’d miss a moment of the action.

Everyone was facing the same way, and she turned to look as well. A young man, tall and blonde, was making his way out of the crowd to a small empty space, directly in front of one of the well-illuminated photographs. He was waving slightly and smiling as he did so, indicating to Max that he was the source of the applause. His hair was blonde, long but gelled back, looking remarkably like a pompadour, though that style was rarely combined with a tuxedo as this man wore.  
He was smiling, so warm and strong-looking, that Max did not recognize him until he pivoted in the space, turning to face the rest of the congregated crowd. Nathan.  
Next to him stood a far more familiar face - Mrs. Chase stood just on the edge of the little crowd, still clapping but facing the crowd as he did.

Max looked next to her, and found another familiar face. Victoria stood next to her, her hair long and dirty blonde, roped into a neat braid. She wore a dark, greyscale suit, and everything from her eyelids to her lips were painted in dark shades with great contrasts, as if in celebration of the photographs that covered the wall behind Nathan.

Max’s fingers were laced together with Victoria’s.

She turned her look back to Nathan, fixated on him as everyone else on the room was.

“Thank you!” he greeted, and laughing at how little he could hear himself, he said it again, “Thank you, thank you so much.”  
The crowd quieted quickly to near silence. Max realized that, for the first time in many long months, she could not feel the thrum of time under her skin.

“Thank you all so much for coming, and thank you so much to Mrs. Chase, ah, mom, for helping me get here today. Not just my photographs, literally - I’m a terrible driver.” Everybody laughed good-naturedly.  
This was the Chase Space in Seattle. And Nathan had a whole art collection here on the walls. A whole corner dedicated to him.  
“Now, uh . . .” Nathan’s face fell a little as he tried to take control of the sort of practiced vulnerability he had learned from spending so much time with the Chases. “As a lot of you guys probably know, when I was pretty young, like, ten or eleven, my mom died. She was killed by a drunk driver the night of the fourth of July. The kid who crashed into her . . . she was just seventeen years old, and she was critically injured in the accident. She was . . . a heroin addict, and she was kind of out of her mind when it happened. I don’t . . . I don’t blame her anymore, but it was hard for me and my dad.”  
  
He swallowed. Everyone was still. They looked, to Max, almost like mannequins, so finely dressed and so unmoving.

“Ah. About a year later, a man broke into my home in Arcadia Bay, looking to rob us. My dad got up when the alarm went off, and went to scare off the burglar. That man - uh, his name is Frank Bowers, and he’s in the Oregon State Penitentiary for the murder of my father, on death row. He’ll probably spend the next twenty years in there . . .” he trailed off, almost lost in thought, but then picked back up.  
“Frank was a drug dealer and addict. Cocaine. From what I know, he was on it when he broke in, and he had some serious debts. From what I . . . know, withdrawals from that stuff are a pretty crazy thing.” He scratched the back of his neck, becoming increasingly nervous the longer this went on. “Arcadia Bay’s economy was, well, it was turning to shit when I was a kid, long before the housing bubble broke. Drugs were everywhere, poisoning an old fishing town on the Oregon coast. I hated that place. I’ve hated it ever since my dad died and the Chases adopted me. They go back down sometimes, but I’ve always stayed here in Seattle. The town’s too full of ghosts. I couldn’t stand it.”

He swallowed. A deep breath. Even a bit of a nervous giggle, both from himself and some members of the crowd. It was always uncomfortable to know when a child had suffered so much.  
“I have a friend here today. Her name is Max - hey, uh, Max, put your hand up, would’ja?”

She let a small, uncomfortable smile plaster her face as she rose her hand long enough for everyone to see her. Victoria even took a small step back so more people could see her tiny girlfriend.

He laughed for a second as she dropped her hand, and continued, “Max grew up in Arcadia Bay too, though we never met each other. She moved down a few years after I did, and we just got to know each other when she started dating my best friend and  _instructeur de la photographie_ , Miss Victoria Chase. The Arcadia Bay she grew up in was total contrast to mine - not that she just had a lah-de-dah life, just . . . when we talked about it, she saw so much life and light there. I could tell, to her, Arcadia Bay would always be home.”

He swallowed again, and his voice dropped in volume just slightly. “So, finally, one day we all took a road trip back down to where it all started. And Arcadia Bay was still full of ghosts. But it was filled with life, too. Just a little fishing town seemingly locked outside of time, struggling like some novel exploration of the American . . . ah, nevermind,” he dismissed the thought, figuring his company would probably prefer _Gatsby_ to _Their Eyes were Watching God_. “Anyway, that’s what this photo series is devoted to. It’s the contrast of my home town, both as Max and I saw it, and ways we’d never seen it before. That’s why it’s all black and white but,” he again trailed off, realizing he was talking to art enthusiasts who didn’t need the idea explained to them. “Yeah, you know that.”

He turned for a second, looking back at home, then forward to the audience. “That’s why I’m so glad mom, uh, the board of the Chase Space, let me donate this photo series to the gallery. I wanted to help my home, like my dad did with Blackwell Academy. That’s why all the proceeds from my work, and every work tonight, is being donated to the Arcadia Bay Youth outreach program, helping kids or their families get into rehab and assisting them afterwards. Drugs tore my family apart, like they’ve been tearing the Bay apart for years. I want to help it _heal_ ,” his voice cracked on ‘heal.’ Then, he forced himself to tack on, “So thank you all, for coming here tonight. Please, get hammered and spend too much money on the art here tonight, it’s for exactly the right reasons - and we’ll even pay for your Ubers home.”

There was a bit of a laugh, but then Max began to clap. She hesitated slightly, but when she saw Victoria beginning to make the same move, she started it up furiously, and the rest were quick to follow.  
Max was crying, and she could tell that she had failed to wear water-safe mascara. When the clapping began to die down, Victoria pulled her aside in front of one of the other photography sets, and pulled out a handkerchief to begin cleaning her face, wordlessly.

Max felt really stupid for crying, but Victoria seemed neither surprised nor bothered.

And that’s when Max read the lettering of the four-picture photo series she was standing next to.

##  **Never Looking Back  
****Max Caulfield**

It was four photos of empty city streets late at night, cars parked on every side, a bright sheen covering them in many cases, as if it had rained recently. They were perfectly still, and in each cases the streets were long and unwinding, pulling the viewer ever forward.

Max had not realized her parents were there, but suddenly there was a small cry of ‘Sweetie!’ in her mom’s voice, and then suddenly they were both there beside her, her mother learning on her shoulders as a sort of hug. “Is everything all right?” She immediately set about doing the arm-rubbing thing that Max found so comforting, which was quite easy as Max was in a black, sleeveless dress. She never wore sleeveless.  
Max nodded with a smile that looked like a grimace. “Yeah. It’s good. It’s really _fucking_ good, actually.” Her dad kind of smiled at her swearing - they had actually considered it an improvement from before she’d met Victoria, when she’d been nothing but puns and clean language.

But it looked like she was not done being greeted, because a second later, there was a voice behind her that cried out among the chatter, “Max!”

She turned around, breaking her mother’s grasp, and found a red-and-gold blur rush against her, scooping her up in one of the tightest hugs she had ever experienced. Which was impressive. “Rachel!” Max blurt out, and leaned forward, pulling Close and nearly smothering her against her shoulder.  
“Oh!” Rachel seemed surprised at the hug in return. “You’re actually hugging me back. It must really be a special day, huh?”  
  
They just kept the hug going, long enough that Max’s parents seemed vaguely uncomfortable, and her dad suggested they go mingle instead of bothering the girls. “Yeah, it’s not so bad,” Max said in blatant understatement. That made Rachel laugh. It was so amazing to hear Rachel laugh.  
“Thank you so, so much for coming to Arcadia Bay. I don’t think Nathan knows how many doors this has opened for me. It’s like, wow, you know?”

Max nodded, although not entirely sure what she was talking about. “Totally,” she replied quietly. Rachel was a _really_ good hugger. Grade A for such a tiny girl.

Rachel took a step back, breaking the hug to push a finger to Max’s chest. “And don’t you go rewinding this when you realize it’s not perfect. Got it?” Rachel’s face was suddenly intense, and Max was taken aback by her stance as well as what she said.  
Rachel’s face pinched in momentary confusion. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t know why I say random stuff like that.” And she hugged Max again.

Max felt a chill, but Rachel was warm. “No . . . it’s okay. I got it. No more rewinds.”

Victoria took a step by them, clearing her throat. The two shorter girls looked up at her. “Can I get in on this?” she asked. She was smiling, her lips a perfectly made-up smirk and she was so beautiful and safe.  
They opened up their arms, and pulled her close, too.

 

##  **The end.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Consequences**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> \- Rachel lives  
> \- Chloe lives  
> \- William lives  
> \- Frank lives  
> \- Max never meets Kate  
> \- Max and Chloe stay in touch, but are not close  
> \- Blackwell academy never hires Mr. Jefferson, and, without funding, loses its national recognition  
> \- Max does not return to Arcadia Bay as a teenager  
> \- Jefferson is not apprehended  
> \- The town of Arcadia Bay is further impoverished and abandoned. However, native peoples spare the land that would have become Pan Estates  
> \- The source of power behind the Prescott fortune is never discovered, and the vials used to change Nathan are never located  
> \- Frank remains on death row  
> \- Nathan pursues his love of photography  
> \- The canon Sacrifice Chloe ending occurs for 'Other Max'  
> \- The 'Memories' multiverse fic happens  
> \- Chloe is chosen to be the next guardian of Arcadia Bay, along with Kate


End file.
